326 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



thought to be neolithic, to classing them with the barbed and 

 leaf-arrow tips, and hence also any other name is accepted as 

 the sailor chooses any port in a storm. An unprejudiced 

 examination of a large number and of the conditions in which 

 they are found would at once dispel these erroneous views. 

 And though broken or spoiled flake arrow-heads have, in many 

 instances, been undoubtedly used as scrapers, or manufac- 

 tured into saws and drills, yet such is the case also with 

 barbed " elf-shots." Though'one or two of the old arrow-tips 

 may be found fashioned into finely toothed saws, it does not 

 follow that the innumerable others which are not were meant 

 to be so, any more than a finely serrated barbed arrow-head 

 found about Tors by the Eev. Mr Wilson proves that all 

 others were meant to be serrated had the workers had time. 

 Many of the old arrow-heads have undoubtedly been employed 

 as scrapers, but the vast majority have not, and have the 

 same general outline as a very much more finely chipped 

 series belonging chiefly to other parts of Wigtownshire, only 

 a few having been got here, and which unmistakably bear 

 the appearance of being much elongated, very neat, finely 

 chipped leaf arrow-heads. All the barbed, and perhaps also 

 all the finer leaf, arrow-tips found here, so far as can be seen, 

 belong to a later date than the 100-ft. series of deposits, and 

 have originally been left on the old surface soil or in its 

 coverings of peat. They are found stratified only in the 

 25-ft. beach deposits, but some are found far up from the 

 coast-line; and indeed the later are the deposits in which 

 any group of implements is found stratified, the further, as a 

 rule, has it upward extensions from the usual margin of its 

 zone. But the High Drummore group (225 ft.), if it be not 

 divisible into different zones, is a marked exception since it 

 has extensions to a height of about 400 ft. It would have 

 been difficult to explain the zonu.lar distribution, had it not 

 been known that man when he left these relics of his presence 

 must long have dwelt in a climate as inhospitable as that of 

 Iceland, and indeed could only support life here on the shores 

 and that during ameliorations of the intense cold. So gradu- 

 ally have the implements disclosed the secrets of their age, 

 and so startling have some of the results been, that I was 



