12 NATURAL SCIENCE. January. 



Glasdruman, Co. Down, and Professor Blake showed a sample of a 

 ferruginous oolite from Cutch, the grains of which being covered with 

 iron pyrites, caused it to be called " golden oolite." 



The Antiquity of Man in Britain. 



The honours of this geological soiree went to Mr. W. J. Lewis 

 Abbott, some of whose exhibits were indeed remarkable. From the 

 Ightham Fissure alone he has increased Prestwich's list of thirty- 

 seven British cave and fissure vertebrates to about ninety, all of 

 which were shown, and among them one of the most interesting 

 was Canis lagopus, the arctic fox. From the Hastings kitchen 

 midden he has secured a large assemblage of diminutive imple- 

 ments, supposed for the most part to be fish-hooks, and to have 

 been used by a peaceful race that in many parts of Europe were 

 settled on the seashore, often in proximity to more warlike tribes. 

 Concerning the customs of this race much information has been 

 accumulated, and we hope in a forthcoming number to publish a 

 paper by Mr. Abbott with illustrations of the extraordinary relics 

 that he has found. He also had some remarkable specimens of stone- 

 working discovered on the supposed sites of ruined cities of India. 

 Their strangeness consisted in the fact that the stone had been 

 chipped into almost perfect cubes and globes, a feat which the 

 modern imitators of the stone-workers, including Mr. Abbott him- 

 self, are quite unable to perform ; many of these specimens, too, 

 were delicately ornamented, presumably by the burning of an alkali 

 into patterns incised upon them. 



But the interest of all these specimens was completely cast into the 

 shade by some rough-looking stones lying on the table. These were 

 flints which certainly bore a striking resemblance to the work of man, 

 which we believe the most critical expert would say probably were 

 the work of man, and which had been obtained by Mr. Abbott's own 

 hands, in the presence of a witness, from the Cromer Forest Bed at 

 Runton, where they were found sticking in the iron pan, portions of 

 which were still attached to them. One of them showed an undoubted 

 bulb of percussion. We shall publish next month an illustrated 

 account of these specimens, which are among the most interesting 

 evidences of human antiquity that have been turned up for many 

 a long year. The Forest Bed, we may remind those of our readers 

 who are not geologists, lies, according to Prestwich, at the base of 

 the Pleistocene or Quaternary system, but is now usually regarded 

 as forming the top of the Pliocene series ; it contains remains of the 

 cave-bear, of the rhinoceros, of the hippopotamus, various species 

 of elephant, deer, and other species of mammals, both living and 

 extinct. In this country, at all events, no one has ever professed to 

 find the remains of man at so low a horizon, although the opinion 



