on the plea of being a geologist and
well known to Mr. John Leckonby, his letters
to whom were always signed "John Wilson,"
and were generally written from Burlington,
where there resided a veritable John Wilson, an
honest dealer in fossils.

Counterfeits and counterfeit antiques have
been known to the world in every age. Mr.
John Evans, F.R.S., has exposed the manufacture
of all kinds of antiquities, in a lecture before
the Royal Institution. The same subject has
been followed up by Mr. Samuel Sharp. A
tendency to dishonesty, for the sake of gain, has
been the characteristic of every age; and the
modern example of whom we are writing is no
unworthy representative of his class –with the
distinctive difference that the rogues of old
forged moneys almost wholly, while Flint Jack
(though he has not shrunk from the fabrication
of old coins) has mainly devoted his time and
talents to the formation and vending of spurious
manuscripts, gems, pottery, bronzes, ornaments,
seals, rings, &c–with special attention to mo-
nastic seals, Roman and Saxon fibulae, the so-
called " coal money," stone hatchets and
hammers, flint arrows and spears, bronze celts, jet
buttons and armlets, and, most remarkable of
all, fossils, and those so admirably executed that
there are few scientific men who have not been
constrained, at some time or other, to confess
themselves " done" by that arrant rogue, Flint
Jack.

Edward Simpson was born in 1815, of humble
parents, his father being a sailor. In his youth
he appears to have been tame and manageable,
like many other wild animals, whose real nature
does not show itself until they have attained
their adult stage. At the age of fourteen, he
entered the service of Dr. Young, the late
historian of Whitby, an ardent geologist. Edward,
his constant attendant in fossil-hunting expeditions, acquire
thus in five years the rudiments
of geology, more particularly of the Yorkshire
coast. He left Dr. Young to serve Dr. Ripley,
also of Whitby, with whom he remained six
years; but his second master's death threw
Edward out of employment, and from that time
to this he has lived loose from all trammels.

From this time he began to acquire his
various aliases. We hear no more of Edward
Simpson. The active and more than ordinarily
intelligent young fellow, who has hitherto borne
that name, becomes Fossil Willy on the
Yorkshire coast; Bones, at Whitby; Shirtless in the
Eastern Counties; the Old Antiquarian, in
Wilts and Dorset; and Flint Jack, universally.

After the death of Dr. Ripley, Fossil Willy
took to a roving life, for some months rambling
about the neighbourhood of Whitby, gathering
specimens, for which he found a ready sale
amongst the local dealers. In 1841 he began to
extend his walks to Scarborough, and there
got to know two gentlemen with whom he had
dealings in fossils. After including Filey and
Bridlington in his exploring expeditions, he
became very " handy" in cleaning fossils, in which
he took as much interest as in their discovery.

He was, consequently, tolerably well off in the
world, and made tramping a really profitable
pursuit; for he never wasted money on any
conveyance, unless when he had a river or the sea
to cross.

In 1843, his taste for geology was suddenly
perverted by his returning to Whitby, and there
being shown the first British barbed arrowhead
he had ever seen. The Tempter, in some
plausible human shape, inquired if he could
imitate it. He said he would try. The spark
had been applied to the train of gunpowder;
and from that time his life of roguery began.
He was henceforth Flint Jack to the backbone.
But the flint arrow-head was Jack's ruin. The
fine workmanship which all genuine arrows
show, and the beautiful regularity of their form,
sorely puzzled him. He made many a failure in
his endeavour to copy the original. At last
a mere accident showed him how to chip flint,
and also revealed the proper tools. Jack,
however, has never yet succeeded in discovering the
mode of surface-chipping; that, he says, is a
barbarous art which has died with the flint-using
people, the Britons. He has exhausted his
ingenuity, and tried every form of tool to effect
this object, without success. Hence, his
forgeries in flint are now easy of detection.

Jack was musing one morning on the weakness
of connoisseurs and the means by which the
Britons had chipped their flints, when,
heedlessly taking out the hasp of a gate which was
hanging loosely in its fastenings, he struck a
blow, without any purpose, with the curved part
of the iron on a piece of flint. To his great
astonishment, off flew a fine flake; so Jack, in
delight, tried again. The second blow was even
more fortunate than the first; the long wished-for
secret was discovered! By practice he
acquired the knack of striking off any sort of
flakes he needed. He afterwards declared, with
pride, that he could at that time make, and sell,
fifty flint arrow-heads per day. Thenceforth
dates that extraordinary supply, to collectors
and museums, of forged flint weapons–the
causes of many a warm discussion of great
annoyance, and of much mirth. The ring or
curve of the gate-hasp did it all.

For heavy work, Jack has supplemented
this with a small round-faced hammer of soft
iron (not steel); and for light work, about
the points and barbs of arrows, the pressure of
a common bradawl is all he requires. In place
of the round-faced hammer, a water-worn pebble
of any hard stone picked up on the beach is
sometimes used–is, in fact, more effective for
striking off flakes of flint, and is only not used
generally on account of its weight. Jack's
pockets were often too heavily laden to add the
weight of a boulder-hammer to the raw material
which they already contained–the flint nodules
out of which he manufactured stone hammers,
hatchets, hand-celts, pounders, and adzes, to
his heart's content.

There now came over him a strong desire to
study antiquities in general; and, by visiting
museums, and obtaining access to private