114 NATURAL SCIENCE [February 



isthmus will be seen rising as a little teat, with a corresponding 

 depression upon the other part of the flint. For all these processes 

 and structures I have more or less satisfactory names, which I hope 

 some day to publish, but sufficient to say that this alone enables us 

 to distinguish between frost pits and man's flaking, a task very 

 often by no means so easy at it might be imagined, especially as we 

 have ' starchy fissure ' and several other phenomena to add to the 

 complexities of the case ; and to these may be added crushings and 

 batterings. 



It is, however, obvious that we should thoroughly under- 

 stand all these processes, to be able to correctly decide in every 

 case that may arise. I have recently described the secondary 

 hall-mark of a man-made flake, the craillure} but we need not be 

 surprised at Mr Cunniugton not referring to this, when we see how 

 little he has made himself acquainted with the facts presented by 

 the Plateaulitlis. But let us see how Mr Cunnington attacks the 

 chippings of these things. His first argument is that it is often of 

 different dates ; he then proceeds to give evidence of this, and even 

 tells us to what these were due. He says " the earliest fractures 

 are the largest, as might be expected, since the conditions were the 

 most vigorous. As the climate became milder the forces that acted 

 on the flints became feebler, and the chips were therefore smaller." 

 Who would have thought that from the size of the flakes struck 

 from a flint geologists would have been informed of such fluctuations 

 of climate, about which nature has otherwise been perfectly silent ? 



It probably never occurred to Mr Cunnington that, supposing 

 there had been a set of small flakes removed first, these would have 

 all been obliterated by the removal of subsequent larger flakes ; and 

 that supposing a flint in the first case were to be a fairly large one, 

 with a set of small flakings first, and then a very large flake were 

 removed, that upon that removed large flake the small chippings 

 would not be the newer, but the older. But I fear all readers of 

 Natural Science will have seen this is the logic unfortunately em- 

 ployed all through this article. His next great objection is that 

 the chippings are of various ages. First of all, let me say at once 

 he has not, nor can he show this to be the case, with more than a 

 fair proportion of plateau specimens, and not upon one of them 

 unless his opponent accepts his grounds upon which he estimates 

 the dates. He then urges the fatality of the three or four different 

 ages of chipping to the work being of human origin. Surely Mr 

 Cunnington has seen specimens of boldly worked Palaeoliths re- 

 worked and polished by Neolithic man, and again subsequently 

 re-chipped. I suppose he would tell us the broad flakings were the 

 result of rigorous cold, the polishing due to a glacial excursion, by 



1 Natural Science, vol, x. pp. 89 to 98. 



