332 NATURAL SCIENCE [November 



the specimens with sharp concave edges would have served a 

 better purpose as scrapers if left as nature had shaped them. The 

 irregular chippings on the edges of the natural curves has spoilt 

 them as tools. 



The vast number of the ' flint implements ' from the plateau 

 gravels is another difficulty in the supposition that they have been 

 made by man. The ' implements ' occur in an abundance described 

 as ' marvellous ' by their discoverers. We are told that two pits, 

 dug in 1894 into a bed of gravel one foot in thickness, yielded 

 thousands of artificial flakes and some hundreds of hollow-notched 

 and horseshoe-shaped scrapers. The pits dug in 180*6 in the same 

 beds have yielded a similar profusion. Such results are indeed 

 startling. Plateau man must have been a very prolific race, for his 

 implements, almost all of one hollow-scraper type, far outnumber 

 those of his palaeolithic successors. 



In ordinary palaeolithic gravels the proportion of implements to 

 pebbles is extremely small, and there is no difficulty in drawing a 

 line between artificially and naturally shaped flints. But on the 

 chalk plateau the stained flints are all more or less chipped. There 

 are millions of flints on the plateaux, and it is therefore not sur- 

 prising that a large number occur in which the shape resembles 

 that of palaeolithic implements. But no distinctive line can be 

 drawn between flints which are described as ' good implements ' 

 and others which are admittedly only naturally broken. 



But if the chipping be not the work of man, what agency, it 

 will be asked, could have produced it. Careful examination of the 

 chipped flints soon suggests suspicious features. In the first place 

 the chipping is limited to the edges of the slabs ; there are no 

 known instances in which the flint has been artificiallv flaked into 

 the form of the weapon ; the asserted human workmanship is limited 

 to chipping of the edges of naturally-shaped flints. 



Mr Harrison maintains that the chips were forced off by an 

 agent which worked only from one face of the flint slab. 1 He 

 regards this feature as an argument in favour of the artificial nature 

 of the chipping. Why eolithic man should have worked only on 

 one surface of the stone is not explained. But. it is really rare to 

 find an example that was chipped on one side only. Palaeolithic 

 man certainly never allowed the utility of his tools to be limited by 

 any such restriction. 



The chipping was evidently due to some pressure which acted 

 more or less at right angles to the flat surface of the flint slab. 

 The pressure and crushing that take place during movements of 

 frozen gravel would, it seems to me, be quite sufficient to account 

 for all the chipping. Pebbles in the gravel would be pressed 

 1 Proc. Geol. Assoc, November 1893, vol. xiii. p. 162. 



