A BIG FOSSIL BONE. 71 



should be beforehand with me in securing 

 a splendid prize. He had found, he said, a 

 lot of * verterberries * that is our local word 

 for vertebrae and also what he took to be a 

 flint implement. One can never trust the 

 scientific diagnosis of a quarryman, so I was 

 not quite sure whether he had really hit upon 

 a big saurian in the secondary lias, or upon 

 some mammalian remains in the quaternary 

 gravel which caps the cliff, and which the 

 workmen have to clear away in the course-of 

 their excavations. Fortunately for me, it 

 turned out to be the latter : for I do not busy 

 myself much about c dragons/ as our navvies 

 call the great saw-toothed saurians, but I am 

 always interested in a stone instrument, or 

 anything else which bears directly upon the 

 early history of mankind. The bones proved 

 to be three fragments of a mammoth 

 skeleton ; and close beside them in the gravel 

 lay the sharp flint knife in situ y with which 

 perhaps some palaeolithic hunter had scraped 

 the bones of his huge prey a hundred thou- 



