PALEOLITHIC RACES 349 



would have doubted their artificial nature. Prof. Max Ver- 

 worn, after a close examination of the flints obtained in his 

 excavations, concludes that 24 per cent, show " indubitable 

 signs " of workmanship, and in the adjacent locality of Puy de 

 Boudieu even 30 per cent. ; about half are classed as "doubtful,'* 

 and only 15 to 20 per cent, as of inorganic origin. Like Prof. 

 A. Rutot, who thinks he can recognise the special purposes for 

 which these fragments were used, classifying them into hammers, 

 anvils, scrapers, burins, missiles, Max Verworn regards them as 

 proof of a fairly well differentiated culture, and he concludes 

 that at the close of the Miocene epoch the valleys of the Cantal 

 were peopled by beings who were already familiar with the art 

 of splitting flints by blows and the formation of implements by 

 comparatively fine marginal chipping under the action of skilfully 

 produced rebounds. G. de Mortillet, while agreeing as to the arti- 

 ficial character of these forms, attributes them to the hypothetical 

 Homosimius, and distinguishes a new species — //. Ramesii. 



On the other hand, M. Marcellin Buole is unable to perceive 

 any signs of intelligent workmanship, and the latest investigator 

 of Puy Corny, Dr. Lucien Mayet, concludes that natural agents, 

 such as variations of temperature, torrential rushes of water, 

 subsidence of the deposits, and no doubt others of which we are 

 ignorant, have played the principal part in the formation of the 

 " eoliths " of Cantal. 



When experts are thus at variance nothing remains for the 

 layman but to preserve an open mind. 



Burma. — In 1894 Fritz Noetling 1 recorded the occurrence 

 of curiously shaped flints in beds of lower Pliocene age near 

 Yenang-yung in Burma : he suggested that they may have been 

 chipped into shape by man. Prof. T. Rupert Jones, 2 after an 

 examination of the only specimen which has yet been figured, 

 asserts that " there can be no doubt as to the artificial dressing 

 of this flake." Mr. R. D. Oldham 3 has shown, however, that the 

 flakes were found lying on an exposed surface, and that it is very 

 doubtful, therefore, whether they are of the age attributed to them. 



East Runton. — In the late Pliocene deposit, known as the 

 Forest Bed of Norfolk, some flints were found by Mr. W. J. L. 



1 F. Noetling, "On the Occurrence of Chipped (?) Flints in the Upper Miocene 

 of Burma," Rec. Geo/. Surv. India, 1894, xxvii. pp. 101-3, pi. 



2 T. Rupert Jones, " Miocene Man in India," Nat. Set. 1894, v. p. 345. 



3 R. D. Oldham, "The Alleged Miocene Man in Burma," Nat. Sa\, 1895, 

 vii. p. 201. 



