112 NATURAL SCIENCE [February 



sented by his four Eosetta stones, he says : — " We therefore see that 

 these plateau flints have been subjected to six different processes, all 

 of which are undoubtedly natural, and which have left clearly 

 recognisable traces" " by which' we can determine the relative dates 

 of the various chippings of the flints which are affirmed to be the 

 work of man." Yet not one of these agencies ever did or could 

 ' chip ' a flint in the sense used by prehistoric anthropologists. 

 Without pointing out the discrepancies between the text and his 

 own summary, but confining ourselves to the latter, we find a 

 splitting of the flint into slabs and tablets, two silicious incrustings, 

 a staining, one or two s^ of glacial striae, but not one word about 

 the very action which alone characterises man's work. As to these 

 six or seven processes, one is tempted to say a word or two upon 

 them. Firstly, the flints of the plateau drifts are neither ' slabs ' 

 nor ' tablets,' they are of all shapes from rounded Eocene to hardly 

 worn and sub-angular pebbles, differing but little from the mean of 

 a score of Palaeolithic gravels. This presumed tabloid condition is 

 brought about by a presumed ' Extreme Cold ' ; which, of course, is 

 warmed into sunshine by the light of actual fact. We next have 

 the extraordinary silicious depositions, which will doubtless surprise 

 and amuse every chemist and petrologist of the day. What he here 

 refers to is by no means clear to my mind. I do not know the 

 Devizes specimen, but I have seen many scores of flints crushed and 

 re-cemented in the Chalk, and have seen these after they had been 

 reduced to pebbles in gravels, and so presume the Wiltshire 

 specimen to be of Cretaceous age. Such re-cementing of crushed 

 and fractured quartzites and agates is well known from the older 

 rocks. I have frequently described them under the heading of 

 faulted and brecciated agates, and have a large collection of them. 

 I can confidently say that 1 have carefully examined, microscopically, 

 the surface of the plateau flints, worked and unworked, for years, 

 without seeing any trace of this brown- or white-washing. There are 

 structures to which Mr Cunnington may refer, but their origin is so 

 obviously different that one is afraid to credit an old observer with 

 so great a mistake. Certainly the idea is altogether at variance with 

 the researches made during the last generation upon the nature and 

 properties of silica. As to the manner in which the flints were 

 coloured, it must be admitted no great concession on Mr Cunning- 

 ton's part to allow that " the staining is no doubt due to ferruginous 

 solutions," and one would be tempted 'to ask, to what else should it 

 be due, were it not for the fact that in the next sentence the iron is 

 traced back to an earlier source in which the flints were once 

 embedded ? 



As to the glacial striae, I fully endorse his opinions that 

 specimens are abundant with striae, in no way distinguishable from 



