304 NATURAL SCIENCE. April. 



Melanesians and Chimpanzees, and showing the great physical and 

 mental gulf between man and any living member of the anthropoid 

 apes. Of course such material as we possess is quite insufficient to 

 permit of any accurate deductions, and it is only by the patient and 

 careful research of such investigators as Mr. Smith that we can hope 

 to obtain the light necessary to partially solve this important and 

 interesting question. After a brief and vivid, though not 

 particularly pleasing, sketch of the habits and life of our ancestors 

 in their wild state and savage homes, Mr. Smith plunges into the 

 main subject of his work, Caddington. 



Caddington, the site of the discovery of an undisturbed living and 

 working place of primeval man, is thirty miles from London, and the 

 excavations, specially made for Mr. Smith, are half a mile west of the 

 village, in so-called brick-earth resting upon chalk-rock, about 600 feet 

 above Ordnance datum. The nature of the deposits and the contour 

 of the country around leads Mr. Smith to the conclusion that in 

 former times the higher ground bordered a lake, or series of large and 

 confluent pools of water. 



Chapter IV. treats of the geology of the Caddington position, the 

 nature of the deposits, and of the old Palaeolithic floor, with the flints 

 found thereon. Of the flakes found on this floor Mr. Smith has 

 replaced more than 500 on to either other flakes, or more or less 

 perfect implements, or cores, from which they were originally struck 

 oflf. This proves that the remains left behind by the inhabitants of 

 this part have suffered little or no disturbance since their time. 



Chapter V. is devoted to the story of the discovery of implements 

 in the Dunstable district, and the gradual tracking of the gravel 

 which contained them to various pits and excavations, until at last 

 the reward came, and the Caddington gravel pits yielded up their 

 treasures. There are two or more types of implements described 

 by Mr. Smith. The first, or " ochreous " type, which came from 

 the upper brown stony clay, and which are all slightly abraded, 

 and the white, lustrous, and sharp-edged type found on the Palaeo- 

 lithic floor itself. The evidence at hand goes to show that the 

 latter are the more recent of the two sets. 



It was in May, 1889, while making an examination of the 

 exposed vertical bank of a clay pit, that Mr. Smith noticed indications 

 of a horizontal streak in the brick-earth, at about six feet from the 

 surface. He had previously suspected the existence of a floor, or 

 working site, from the fact that the sharp and unabraded chips 

 of flint were usually met with in the fallen material. In this streak, 

 he here and there noticed a stone embedded, and at one place saw a 

 small flint half projecting from the face of the excavation. On 

 removing the flake, he found it to be a beautifully made scraper, and 

 saw that it was identical with one he had found two years before in 

 the same locality. More discoveries followed, but it was not until the 

 end of March, 1890, that he established the fact of the finding of a 

 Palaeolithic floor or living surface, similar to the one discovered by 

 him several years previously at Stoke Newington. 



The succeeding sixty pages of the book are taken up with a 

 description of the flint implements and flakes found on this Palaeo- 

 lithic floor, beautifully illustrated by Mr. Smith's own drawings, and 

 showing the actual implements themselves, as well as the restoration 

 of them to the rough block from which, in many cases, they were 

 made, by the fitting on of chipped fragments found associated with 

 them. 



In Chapter X. we have a description of the Caddington position in 



