1898] A UTHENTICITY OF PL A TEA U IMPLEMENTS 1 1 5 



which stones do get smoothed, and the smaller re-chippings to a 

 ' milder ' climate. When he attacks the features presented by the 

 chipping one is quite pained. He says : — 



{a) " The chipping is limited to the edges of the slabs." This 

 is utterly false. 



(h) " There is no known instance in which the iHnt has been 

 artificially liaked into the form of a weapon." This is equally in- 

 correct. I have numbers. 



(c) The asserted human workmanship is limited to the chipping 

 of the edges of naturally shaped flints. This is equally untrue. I 

 have numbers of bulbed flakes which have been worked into shape, 

 and many bearing an draillure. 



(d) The chipping being confined to one side of tlie flint is 

 also misleading and incorrect, and only holds good in some types. 

 Others are worked on both sides and pass up insensibly through a 

 very extensive group I have called the transitional forms, when we 

 have Plateau outlines with work essentially Palaeolithic. It is when 

 we come to the causes which produced these chippings that we are 

 most astounded. The first postulate is that " the chipping was due to 

 some pressure which acted more or less at right angles to the surface 

 of the flint." Surely Mr Cunnington can never have read anything 

 that has been written on this point. Let him try the experiment, 

 and when he can strike off a flake by a right-angled blow, let him 

 show us how he does it. The next hypothesis is that the flakes 

 were thus removed under glacial conditions. Here, fortunately, we 

 pass from matters of mere conjecture to one to which we can 

 appeal to nature herself. But, firstly, we may ask, do the four sets 

 of chippings, separated by long intervals, represent four great glacial 

 periods ? According to the various postulates they do. Secondly, 

 can he give us any method by which we can distinguish the 

 chippings of plateauliths from the palaeoliths ? Before me are 

 specimens bearing the old Plateau work and subsequent Paleolithic 

 and Neolithic work. As these are all mathematically similar, are we 

 to add yet another three or four glacial periods ? But why raise 

 matters of conjecture when we have nature herself to appeal to ? 

 We have our glacial deposits passing over rocks of all ages, and in 

 East Anglia these are largely flint - bearing. Surely if these 

 plateauliths were of glacial origin we should find them here. But 

 do we ? Certainly not. 



If other arguments were wanted I might urge that quartzites of 

 similar work to the flints of the plateau have been found in regions 

 in Africa where no evidence of glacial action is known to occur. 

 Dr Leith of Praetoria has sent several consignments of these to 

 this country, to which I hope to refer at greater length on a future 

 occasion. 



