Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xlvi. (1901), No. % 1 1 



of human hands, or at best what the doubter stigmatises 

 as " wastrels." 



No one doubts the occurrence of natural forms with 

 or without modification, but, as I hope to satisfy you, it is 

 neither scientific nor even just to condemn the research 

 on account of such occurrences. 



Sir John Evans complains, in reference to the 

 plateau implements, "that it is truly an irony of fate 

 " that one, who has for forty years defended the 

 "artificial origin of Palaeolithic axes, finds himself at this 

 " day obliged to object to the facility with which people 

 " sometimes consider simply flaked flints as indisputably 

 "the result of human labour." This reflection is certainly 

 limited in its range, but it is widely used to confirm 

 scepticism. 



In a paper read before the Geological Society in 1898, 

 Mr. W. Cunnington, after examining in detail certain 

 specimens, pronounced that they were clearly either of 

 the age of the river-gravel specimens which we have con- 

 sidered before, or had been chipped by natural agencies, 

 such as movement in beds of frozen or thawing gravel, 

 and, if not, the marginal chipping must be held to be the 

 work of man after thr palaeolithic race. 



The discussion in the Society was summed up by the 

 President's declaration that the author's argument had 

 conclusively disproved the claim that the Kent Plateau 

 had been the home of the primitive palaeolithic people. 



One cannot help wondering whether the survey of the 

 author or the judge had not, in fact, been of a range of 

 specimens of only the narrowest and even, perhaps, con- 

 fused selection. 



It is understood that our own geologist, Professor 

 Boyd Dawkins, shares the scepticisms and objections of 

 Sir John Evans ; and Sir Henry Howorth has recently 



