8 GUIDE TO THE FOSSIL MAMMALS AND BIRDS. 



Table-case has compared with the living Eskimo. Tlie stone imple- 

 ments are supplemented by bone harpoons, bone pins or 

 awls, and even by well-made bone needles. The sinews of 

 reindeer were doubtless used for sewmg together skins, 

 just as they are employed by the Lapps and Eskimo at the 

 present day. Pierced teeth were probably strung together 

 into necklaces and armlets. There are also incised bones, 

 with outlines roughly portraying the animals of the chase. 

 Examples of the stone and bone implements from Kent's 

 Cavern, Torquay, and from the French caverns, are shown in 

 Table-case 1. One incised reindeer antler in the same Case 

 from a French cavern displays the rough outline of the fore- 

 part of a horse. Plaster casts of more celebrated bone 

 implements and outline sketches of the same age, are placed 

 in .a frame on the wall adjoining the window. 



This small selection of the handiwork of Palaeolithic 

 man is exhibited here merely to illustrate his association 

 with the Pleistocene mammals. The principal collection 

 both of Pala:>olithic and later workmanship in the British 

 Museum is placed in the Department of British and Mediaeval 

 Antiquities at Bloomsbury, and is described in " A Guide to 

 the Antiquities of the Stone Age," obtainable at the British 

 Museum, Bloomsbury, W.C. 



The late Sir Joseph Prestwich and some other geologists 

 have expressed the opinion, that there is evidence of the 

 presence of man in western Europe at a remote time even 

 before most of our valleys were excavated and before the 

 present drainage -system of our land was established. This 

 evidence consists in rough pieces of flint, which seem to have 

 been chipped artificially along one or more edges, and may 

 have been used by man. These supposed implements were 

 first noticed by Mr. Benjamin Harrison in the high-level 

 plateau-gravels, probably of Upper Pliocene age, in Kent ; 

 and many of his sjjecimens are included in the Prestwich 

 Collection, of which the principal series is exhibited in 

 Table-case 1. They are termed " eoliths " by those who 

 believe that they represent the dawn of the Stone Age of 

 Man. 



British Pliocene Mammals. 



Table-ease Very little is known of the mammals inhabiting the 



British area during the Pliocene period. They are only 

 represented by very fragmentary remains in the marine 

 Pliocene Crag deposits of East Auglia, and by equally un- 



la. 



