ENGLAND'S OLDEST INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8134, 8 May 1906, Page 7

ENGLAND'S OLDEST INDUSTRY

» The oldest industry in England is one but little known. Brandon the home of the flint "knappers'' in Suttokl, lies out of the track of tourists and most of its visitors -consist of those interested in prehistoric man. For theindustry of Brandon (so a writer in the "Wide World Magazine" tells us) goes back to the earliest Niolithio times, from 10,000 to 50,000 yearß ago. The continuity of it has, so far as one can tell, been unbroken, and to-day in the Brandon CUSTOMS AND SPEECH there can be found traces of the times before the dawn of history. Nowhere else are found suoh flintsb at Brandon. In Neolithic times men first used them for weapons and implements, and then for matting fire, whiobdown, to the inven tion of the match last century, was the great use to which they were pat. When the flintlock REPLACED THE MATCHLOCK on guns a new abd wide demand was created, which existed until the middle of the nineteenth century. Then, in the face of the disoovery of matches and fulminating puwder, the industry ulmost died out. But it revived again when the guamakers of England and other places found out that there was an excellent trade to be done with the natives of Africa and the Arabs in flintlock muskets. To most of these natives the supply, of "weapons of precision is prohibited, but FLINTLOCK WEAPONS do not nome under this category, and so fluriehing trade is maintained, which keeps several factories, in Birmingham and elsewhere constantly employed, and creates a demand for 150,000 flints a week. The number may seem too great to be correct but it must be remembered that flints have constantly to be renewed. Nor are the flint "knappers" above a little deoeit. Though milk coloured flints are just as good as blaok ones, the natives will not have antyhiug but the blaok, so the milk coloured are carefully blackened. Then, too, many Italian and Spanish peasants still PREFER FLINT AND TINDER to matoheß and no explorer will ever sec out without this means of obtaining a fire, so that altogether Brandon does very well under the oiroumstanceß. The men sink their pita just as they were souk in the Neolithic age, and the tools they j use have not altered in style since then. Indeed, one of the proofs of the descent of the industry from those ancient times is the resemblance between the modern flint pick and a stag's antler, which was the origin of the tool. The very chalk candlestick used by the miner is just the same as the vessel in which the Neolithic workman burned bis grease.