December ist, igoS.] PROCEEDINGS. ix 



The President also announced that Mr. H. Brereton Baker, 

 M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S., Lee's Reader in Chemistry in the Uni- 

 versity of Oxford, would deliver the Wilde Lecture on March 9th, 

 1909, the subject being "The Lifluence of Moisture on the 

 Combination of Gases." 



Professor Alfred Schwartz, M.Sc. Tech., read a paper 

 written in conjunction with Sir Hugh R. Beevor, Bait., i\LD., 

 entitled " The Dawn of Human Intention : an Experi- 

 mental and Comparative Study of Eoliths." The paper 

 will appear in full in the Memoirs. 



The paper was profusely illustrated by lantern slides and 

 drawings, and several hundred specimens, together with an 

 experimental series, which members were invited to handle and 

 examine for themselves, were exhibited. 



An interesting discussion followed in which Professor W 

 BovD Dawkins admired the ingenuity with which the authors 

 of this paper had imitated some of the simpler primitive tools 

 of man by experiment with flint splinters, and he thought it 

 probable that these belonged to a very early stage in the 

 evolution of culture because of their simplicity. They were 

 found in Palaeolithic and Neolithic deposits, and had not yet 

 been proved to occur in any strata before the Pleistocene age 

 in any part of Europe. The term ' Eolithic ' first used by 

 Mr. Harrison, which includes these and numerous other broken 

 flints probably not artificial, is based on the mistake that the 

 sands and gravels of the Kent Plateau are pre-palaeolithic. 

 They contain Palaeolithic haches of the usual type, as may be 

 seen by reference to the British Museum, and, therefore, belong 

 to that age. Professor Boyd Dawkins declined to accept any of 

 the speculations based on this mistake, such as those put for- 

 ward in the paper. The view that man lived on the earth during 

 the Oligocene Period, a period before any of the living higher 

 Mammalia had appeared on the earth is contrary to the law of 

 evolution, and if ' Eolithic ' flints do occur in these strata it is 

 an argument against their artificial character. While not denying 



