35 o SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Abbott 1 in 1897, and these present many features suggestive of 

 human workmanship. Sir John Evans, who has examined them, 

 expresses himself with great reserve. The specimen " No. 4 may 

 or may not be artificial, and the same may be said of No. 3, with 

 even greater probability of its having been made by man." 



Boncclles— Last of all, M. E. de Munck 2 and M. A. Rutol 3 

 have discovered abundant chipped flint flakes, which they regard 

 as representing an " eolithic industry," in pebble beds of supposed 

 middle Oligocene age. The true nature of these flints and the 

 geological horizon on which they occur are still sub judice. 



We have now reached the end of this summary, and find 

 ourselves precisely where we were, having obtained no evidence 

 either for or against the existence of man in times previous to 

 the great Ice age. 



The subject bristles with difficulties naturally inherent to it. 

 The finished flint implement, which we shall meet with later in 

 Pleistocene deposits, is a work of art — every touch tells of 

 intelligent design ; but it was not achieved, we may feel sure, 

 by a sudden inspiration : if we adopt the uniformitarian tenets 

 of the day we shall be led to suppose that it was a product of 

 slow growth, the issue of a long series of preceding stages. 

 The first implements to be used by a creature of dawning 

 intellect would be those that lie ready to hand ; a pebble seems 

 specially designed for a missile, yet it will also serve admirably 

 for a hammer, and a broken flint is by no means a bad knife. 



But broken flints are not always to be found when wanted ; 

 in that case they may be made at will by the simple process of 

 striking one against another ; and when this momentous experi- 

 ment has been made the equally momentous discovery follows 

 that the resulting fragments possess an edge of almost un- 

 rivalled keenness. The first step has now been taken, the 

 stimulus of discovery soon leads to others ; directly the tyro 

 takes to hammering flints he begins to perceive with what 

 tractable material he has to deal, he learns its habits and tricks 

 of fracturing, and so passes on to shape it into forms which he 

 has already framed in his mind as suitable to meet his ends. 

 These will bear every evidence of design ; the pebble which he 



1 W. J. L. Abbott, "Worked Flints from the Cromer Forest Bed," Nat. Sci. 

 1897, x. p. 89. 



2 E. de Munck, "Les alluvions a eolithes de la terrace superieure de la vallee de 

 1'Ourthe," Bull. Soc. Beige de ge'ol. xxi. 1907. Pr.-verb. 



3 A. Rutol, " Un grave Probleme," Bull. Soc. Beige de ge'ol. xx.. 1907. Mem. 



