titute of hedgerows, fences, or of any of that orderly cultivation that characterises the English countryside. For mile upon mile there is nothing but sand, grass, and bracken; here and there copses of pine, spruce, oak, and elm; and everywhere rabbits rabbits in teeming colonies, so thick upon the ground that excellent though the turf looks for a good gallop, it is so honeycombed with burrows that it is unsafe even to walk a horse across it. The close-cropped grass gleams with white splinters of flint, thrown up by the rabbits. Walk carefully, and examine these sharp brittle stones. Mark this one's razor-like cutting edge. Do not those tiny flake-marks along its face suggest that man has at some time or other definitely tried to improve upon the work that nature has begun! It is a prehistoric scraper, perhaps, or a fragment of an axe-head. The rabbits are for ever throwing them up, for on this site once stood the arsenal of prehistoric Britain.

runs a broad bed of flint, that opaque blue-black variety of quartz formed largely from fossilised remains of diatoms and sponges which lived in the seas which covered the face of the world in the very dawn of time. Flint, of course, occurs in very many parts of the British Isles, but nowhere else is it found so dark of hue or so productive of sparks when struck by steel. Though it is found in seams, these are not, as with minerals, continuous layers, but are made up of a succession of separate lumps, varying in size and shape, but all of more or less irregular but rounded form, and each crusted with a covering of a white chalky substance.

The flint-bed consists of six distinct layers, the topmost of which is known as "horns.” This is followed by the "topstone," by the "wall-stone" and by the upper crust before the fifth layer or "floorstone is reached. This is the best type of accessible flint, though there is a lower level still, the "black smooth stone," which is the best quality of all; but no matter how dry the season, once one piece has been hewn out, water follows and floods the galleries. This was the raw material of primitive man, just as it is of the "flint knappers " who still carry on the trade to-day.

The centre of this ancient arsenal lies some three miles from Brandon, in Snake Wood, a large plantation where "the deadly night-shade has forced its way through the chalk

and rubble, where ferns grow luxuriantly in the hollows, and the rock-rose blooms in summer." But neither the flowers nor the ferns nor the grasses can cloak the mutilated surface of the ground, which everywhere over an area of more than twenty acres is pitted with vast craters of chalk and flints, reminiscent of a piece of the shell-blasted battlefields of France. These are Grimes Graves. None knows why they are so called, though it is supposed that the name was given by the Scandinavian or Saxon invaders of England to any ancient earthwork or tumulus for which they could not account. Certainly the name Grime or Grim occurs frequently as applied to mounds or earthworks throughout the British Isles, while the only tradition in connection with it is the picturesque Norse legend of how the port of Grimsby got its name. This is the story of Havlok ("the sea waif "), the son of a powerful Danish chief who was rescued from drowning off the English coast by a poor fisherman named Grim. Havlok's grateful father rewarded Grim with the gift of the fishing village as it then was of Grimsby (Grimsburgh). But delightful though it is, this story dates from only comparatively recent historical times, somewhere between 600 and 900 A.D., and can therefore have no connection with the ancient folk who dug the two hundred and fifty-four craters which comprise the Graves.

The first actual reference to

these diggings is in 1586, when they are described as small trenches or ancient fortifications," and there is another one of 1739 which refers to them as a very curious Danish encampment. Indeed, the idea that they were of military origin persisted right down to the middle of the last century, when scientific excavations began to be made, revealing the graves to be the flint mines of prehistoric man. As the excavators sunk their shafts through the loose rubble, they came across the bones of man, of small oxen, sheep, pigs, deer, and dogs-domestic dogs, too, though it is somewhat pathetic that there is evidence in plenty to show that when too old for hunting "the dog it was that died "-in the cook-pot! Actually the excavators were only emptying old shafts dug by the primitive workers in search of the precious flint. These shafts are vertical, decreasing in diameter as they near the bottom, until at last the main flint level or floorstone" is reached, when galleries branch out all round. Little Little of the floor-stone remains, having been all worked out thousands of years ago, but of themselves and their activities the workmen have left abundant trace. For example, in the surface layer of hard chalk at the mouth of one shaft are still visible the holes into which fitted the ends of a beam from which the prehistoric digger let himself down by a grass or raw-hide rope. We know that he hewed out

the flint with picks made of the antlers of deer, as hundreds of these have been found in the diggings. Once he had got the flint to the surface, he proceeded to fashion the huge blocks into arrow heads, scrapers, axes, spear heads, needles, pins, and fish-hooks. His only instrument was a quartzite pebble, ground to an edge by sand against hard stone, but so skilled were these ancient workmen that they could strike off flakes of varying size and shape from the block, and then by laborious chipping fashion these into the instrument required.

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Leap over the thousands of years, and see how the work is done to-day. The quarries are now on the common land at Lingheath, where the townsfolk have the right of digging for flint, and if anything the method of quarrying is even primitive than that practised at Grimes Graves. The digger first makes a shallow grave-like hole about eight feet by three feet, and four feet deep, in the centre of which he sinks a shaft to the depth of about five feet. He then excavates horizontally for a few feet, and sinks another five-foot shaft, and by this means makes a series of steps till he reaches the flint-bed, when he proceeds to burrow horizontally in all directions, exactly the same as his prehistoric prototypes.

Although the mouth of the shaft is carefully orientated so that it shall receive the greatest proportion of light during the day, the quarryman is naturally

compelled to work by candlelight. Here again there is perfect continuity with prehistoric times. The excavations at Grimes Graves brought to light many rude chalk receptacles which, filled with animal fat as fuel and moss as wick, had served as lights for the ancient digger. The modern flint quarrier uses exactly the same sort of chalk candlestick, with the sole difference that he buys a candle instead of using moss and fat! With tools consisting solely of a pointed pick and a crowbar, the digger, sitting on the floor of the burrow, prises the blue-black lumps of flint from the chalk, and brings them to the foot of the shaft. The weight of these flint blocks varies from two to sixteen stone, but nothing, not even a rope or pulley, is used to bring them to the surface.

Taking the piece in his hands, the digger lifts it and leans back until it rests upon his chest. Altering the position of his hands, he brings the stone to the top of his head, and by a quick jerk to the first step of the shaft. He then climbs up himself, and repeats the process until he and his load arrive laboriously at the top.

When sufficient stones have been raised, they are loaded on a cart and taken to the "knapper." Seated in his workshop, a rough wooden shelter, maybe in his little garden among his flowers and his vegetables, the knapper selects a large lump of the flint, places it on his knee, which is protected by a leather pad, and

then strikes it with a heavy hammer, breaking it into pieces of about six inches square. This is known as "quartering," quartering," the art of which consists in splitting the stone so as to leave a square edge from which to begin the next process, "flaking." Flaking is a very difficult operation, a high degree of proficiency being required to strike the stone on the proper spot, at the proper angle, with the proper force. The instrument used is a curious diamondheaded type of hammer, the origin of which, like most other features of this ancient industry, is a story in itself, for it owes its introduction to the ingenuity of a French prisonerof war named Freuer, who during the Napoleonic wars was incarcerated at Brandon. He improved upon the primitive instrument then in use, and so much did the trade grip him that on his release from captivity he returned to Brandon, married a local girl, and founded another family of "knappers under the anglicised name of Frewer. The expert knapper using this hammer will turn out from 5000 to 7000 flakes a day, working so fast that a second flake is struck off before the first has fallen to the ground.

most on this stake, the knapper trims it into shape with a hammer made from a flat file drawn out at each end. The average

number of flints knapped per hour is about three hundred and fifty, though a first-class workman will complete as many as five hundred. The weekly output for one man ranges between 10,000 and 12,000.

It will be at once asked, for what purpose are flints used nowadays? In this age of iron and steel, what use is there for flint weapons or instruments ? Properly to appreciate the position, it is necessary to cast back again into history. I have said that the flint knapper links the present with the prehistoric, and for proof of this you have only to ask your expert knapper to make you a flint arrow-head, fish-hook, scraper, spear-head

what you will. He will do it at once with a skill which makes it impossible for the uninstructed to tell it from an authentic neolithic specimen dug out of some grave or gravelpit. The art has not been lost, even if the purpose has disappeared. Sets of these copies of ancient weapons are now to be seen in museums all over the world, in America as well as in Europe. Most of these, however, are the work of one man, Fred Snare, who has himself fallen a victim to the fascination of his own trade, and has studied the art of prehistoric flint work to such purpose that with modern implements

He can produce not only replicas of flint weapons and instruments, but makes them in crystal, obsidian or glass. Indeed, some of his arrow-heads cut from the thick brown glass of a Bovril bottle are exceedingly ornamental. Not content with imitating his own forebears, Snare has studied types of primitive weapons found in other countries, and can just as easily trim off a flint fisharrow such as was once used by the North American Indian for shooting salmon, the flatheaded bird-arrow of the neolithic period, or even the bone harpoons and barbed arrows of the South Sea Islands peoples.

With the advent of history and the keeping of records, Brandon is already famous for the skill of its flint workers. In the eleventh century knappers from Brandon were sent to shape the flints to build churches at Cromer, and even at far-away Hastings on the south coast. More remarkable still, Snare was then, as it is to-day, a well-known name among the flint - working families. Here's a thought for the modern! The same name and the same trade have survived more than ten centuries of progress. The link is a double one.

Now it is less than one hundred years ago that the advent of the phosphorus match sounded the knell of the tinderbox. Before 1833 the striking of flint on steel to ignite a piece of charred cotton was the only known method of making fire, and it is therefore

easy to see the importance to England throughout the ages of Brandon's flint industry. The little band of workers grubbing for flints round the small town beside the Fens must have sent their products all over the country to bring light and warmth to the homes of Norman or Saxon, nobleman or serf. The wise householder of Plantagenet, Tudor, or Stuart times was always careful to ask for the best Brandon flints! But the making of tinder-boxes was a steady uneventful industry involving a regular production year by year. It needed the evolution of the flint-lock musket to raise Brandon to a position of national importance, and to make it again what it must have been in prehistoric times, the arsenal of the kingdom.

The flint-lock was introduced into England from the Continent about the middle of the seventeenth century, and from that time till almost the middle of the nineteenth century Brandon formed the sole source of supply of flints for the Government. At no other time nor in any other country, perhaps, were the State's defences dependent upon the energies of one small body of men, without whose all-important products not a gun could be fired in Army or Navy! These two hundred years were the years of Brandon's greatness. Every week a sale of flints was held in the market-place, and was attended by the Government contractors, who bowled down the long straight roads from London in