60 BULLETIN OF THE LIVERPOOL MUSEUMS. 
This low hill is limestone, but covered to a great depth with alluvial 
deposits ‘laid down in ancient times,” “much solidified, containing 
boulders of flint and quartzite.” —(Seton-Karr.) 
This ridge or hill seems to have escaped denudation except by rain 
drops, “which have sufficed to lay bare the implements.”—(Sefon- 
Kurr.) 
On the high plateau “marine limestones of probably Lower Tertiary 
(Eocene) age occur”; and to ‘‘the south of Berbera are raised reefs 
of Pleistocene age” (Gregory), indicating, therefore, considerable 
changes in the level of the land both in early and late Tertiary 
times. 
The Issutugan implements, if of Palzolithic age, have, therefore, rested 
not on a flat bed-rock without wash either way, but on a deep alluvium 
ona slope which has escaped denudation “in safety,” “free,” according to 
their finder, “from river action, deposition, or denudation,” unaffected, that 
is, by the action of the elements since the Pleistocene of Europe, notwith- 
standing “the heavy showers which constitute the rainfall in Somaliland” 
(Seton-Karr). One may, perhaps, note in passing that elsewhere the rain falls 
less indiscriminately both on the evil and the good, in recent if not in Paleo- 
lithic times! If these implements have been washed out by rain or wind 
action, they were necessarily previously buried; but they have now been 
(most methodically !) exposed over a tract of country in one even horizon three 
miles in length. Some of the implements are eroded, as Mr. Seton-Karr 
records, ;4, of an inch, but the majority (certainly, all those seen by the 
present writer) are as sharp as the day they were made, and the inequalities 
appear to me to be not the effect of sand-wear, but to have been produced in 
their manufacture or by sun-flaking. The “paleoliths” from the high 
plateaux of Egypt, where the exposure has been greater, show still fewer 
signs of sand-wear. 
One would wish to know how of the two sets of implements found on the 
surface the “early Neolithic” are to be separated from the “ Paleolithic.” 
What reason is there for supposing that the Issutugan “ paleoliths” (which 
were found without any flakes around them) were not brought from the 
“Neolithic” factories, where the nodules and the flakes from them lie 
side by side? Was it in the pride of their advanced civilisation that 
the Neolithic inhabitants disdained to use the numerous implements left to 
their hand on the surface by their Paleolithic precursors, close to the 
scene of their very laborious operations? Would not the Pluvial epoch 
predicated by Petrie for Egypt in the Pleistocene Age, have also prevailed in 
Somaliland, producing a luxuriant vegetation there also, with all the results 
of a rainy age on a deep alluvium, “ river action, deposition, denudation,” and 
washing downwards of the implements? Are the effects of subaerial denuda- 
tion elsewhere at all similar to what is recorded to exist on the site of these 
tools? or, Is it likely that these would after such a period be found spread 
out on a horizon shaved down so evenly for three miles in length as to 
present no unmistakable signs of denudation ? 
When Sir John Evans says, as quoted above, that there is apparently no 
association of Neolithic with Paleolithic forms in Somaliland, he means, I 
suppose, that the two kinds do not occur together on the site of the great find 
of Paleolithic tools near the Issutugan River. Still, according to their dis- 
coverer, the spear heads found not far off on the surface are Neolithic although 
unpolished. How the discrimination is made I do not venture to surmise, 
but shall wait to hear from those who have made the differentiation. If, on 
the other hand, Sir John holds that all the Somaliland implements are of 
Palzolithic Age, he is met with this difficulty that some of the tools have been 

