xxvi Journal of Proceedimjs. 



as a "bulb of percussion," and illustrated his remarks by specimens 

 taken from those sent by Mr. Worthington Smith which had been found 

 in the area of the British Camp near Ightham, Sevenoaks, Kent. 



Mr. Kobarts, F.G.S., cautioned the members of the Society against 

 supposing that there was any very distinct line between the Palaeolithic 

 and the NeoHthic Ages. The Paleolithic implements, which were roughly 

 formed, were so far mixed with the Neolithic, for a reason which he would 

 give later on, that when they found Palaeolithic implements they must 

 not conclude — from that, at all events — that then- age was very great. 

 Implements which were not polished, which were little more than flakes, 

 would naturally be made by hunters or by people who wanted implements 

 in a hurry. And often they might expect that, in the summer season, 

 when a hunter came across the then mainland — now the German Ocean — 

 into Great Britain, he would leave a small deposit of implements, which, 

 when found, might be considered Paleolithic. And they must not con- 

 sider that Neolithic implements were all done with after bronze was 

 introduced. Bronze would have been an article of luxury and used by 

 the chiefs, whereas the rank and file would not have been able to use 

 bronze weapons, but must have been content with stone ones. In all 

 probability stone implements were used even long after the introduction 

 of u'on. Then again we had almost contemporaneous evidence of the 

 manufacture of stone implements — at all events they were manufactured 

 in America as late as the middle of the 16th century. Flint implements 

 were then made by the Indians at Montreal, whereas a couple of hundred 

 years afterwards they were utterly unknown, and when dug up— had it 

 not been known by certain memoranda made by a voyager that there had 

 been that camp of Indians there — they might have been put down to a 

 period hundi'eds or even thousands of years previously. Another point 

 to be taken into consideration was this : it must not be taken that the 

 engravings on the bones were always engravings of contemporaneous 

 animals. There was considerable probability that they were of the 

 nature of totems which descended from father to son, as they did among 

 the American Indians ; and there was a probabihty that, instead of these 

 figures being pictorial representations of animals living at the time — 

 although they would have been that in the first place — they were simply 

 the designs of chiefs, and might thus have kept to the Mammoth, though 

 the Mammoth had then no existence. He would add to the manufactories 

 the President had named one which he had not mentioned : the holes 

 known as Grimes's Graves, which were in aU probability made to get into 

 good strata of flints — flints which would work easily. As supporting the 

 theory that flint implements were objects of barter, Mr. Eobarts mentioned 

 that they were found in considerable numbers in places destitute of the 

 stone from which they were made ; and certain stones had been carried 

 all over Europe, and might be traced almost to one particular spot where 

 the factory was. As to the tiuestion of difticulty in distinguishing the 

 worked flints, he said that they might get doubtful flakes and be uncertain 



