Miscellaneous. 237 



He does not, however, consider that the facts, as they at present 

 stand, of necessity carry back Man in past time more than they bring 

 forward the great extinct Mammals towards our own time, the 

 evidence having reference only to relative and not to absolute time ; 

 and he is of opinion that many of the later geological changes may 

 have been sudden or of shorter duration than generally considered. 

 In fact, from the evidence here exhibited, and from all that he 

 knows regarding drift phenomena generally, the author sees no 

 reason against the conclusion that this period of Man and the ex- 

 tinct Mammals — supposing their contemporaneity to be proved — 

 was brought to a sudden end by a temporary inundation of the 

 land ; on the contrary, he sees much to support such a view on 

 purely geological considerations. 



The paper concludes with a letter from Mr. John Evans, F.S.A. 

 and F.G.S., regarding these implements from an antiquarian rather 

 than a geological point of view, and dividing them into three classes : — 



1. Flint flakes — arrow-heads or knives. 



2. Pointed weapons truncated at one end, and probably lance or 

 spear heads (fig. 2). 



3. Oval or almond-shaped implements with a cutting edge all 

 round, possibly used as sling-stones or as axes (fig. 1). 



Mr. Evans points out that in form and workmanship those of the 

 two last classes differed essentially from the implements of the so- 

 called Celtic period, which are usually more or less ground and 

 polished, and cut at the wide and not the narrow end ; and that, had 

 they been found under any circumstances, they must have been 

 regarded as the work of some other race than the Celts or known 

 aboriginal tribes. He fully concurs with Mr. Prestwich, that the 

 beds of drift in which they were found were entirely undisturbed. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Note on the Affinities of Rhvnchosaurus. 

 By Prof. Richard Owen, F.R.S. 



To the Editors of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 



Gentlemen, — A second and better-preserved specimen of the 

 rare fossil reptile, Rhynchosaurus, from the New Red Sandstone of 

 Shropshire, having been lately obtained from the Grinsill quarries, 

 near Shrewsbury, and kindly transmitted for my examination by the 

 authorities of the Museum of Natural History of that town, I have 

 been enabled to determine the position of the two nostrils a little in 

 front of the orbits, and to discern traces of dental structure in parts 

 of the two bodies which, in the original specimen described by me 

 in 1842, held the place of, and were described as, "intermaxillary 

 bones." This discovery adds to the reasons for associating the lihyn- 

 chosaurus with the Dicynodouy in the same natural order or group 



