210 PROF. T. M’KENNY HUGHES, M.A. 
of birds have been scored by man when cutting off the sinews 
to get thread for sewing. Besides these, however, some solitary 
specimens of bone, or wood, or stone, dressed, and cut, and 
scored, have been found in deposits in which there is no other 
trace of man, and where these specimens themselves are the 
only evidence adduced of man’s existence at the time. It 
becomes a question of much importance, therefore, to ascer- 
tain the various ways in which such markings are produced. 
I have already commented* upon the manner in which 
sticks get worn down in water, so that they appear as if 
cut across the grain to a tapering point; I have shown 
how teeth, and bones, and shells get perforated so as to 
resemble those strung by savages as beads.t Jukes explained 
the indentations on some bones of an Irish elk, found under 
peat near Legan, in Ireland, by pointing out that pieces of 
the antler lay against the bone or bone against bone, exactly 
fitting, so that the indentations on the one corresponded to 
projections on the other.t I now propose to criticise the 
evidence to be derived from scorings at regular intervals, and 
cross-cuts, and such-like markings. 
It is difficult, when examples of this kind are brought 
forward, and are represented as the work of man, to prove the 
negative, however convinced you may be of the improbability 
or even impossibility of man’s having been where they are 
found. It is not always possible to brig forward at once 
satisfactory evidence that they were not made by man, whose 
work they often exactly resemble; or, to answer the question, 
if they were not made by man, what then can have produced 
them? It is useful, therefore, when one happens to meet with 
such a bit of evidence, to place it on record, so as to have it 
ready for reference when the particular point on which it 
bears is under discussion. I now exhibit two saurian bones 
distinctly scored at regular intervals by cuts, such as might 
be produced by a flint knife. For comparison I show 
also a pointed bone which I brought from the palzo- 
lithic cave of Gourdan in the Pyrenees, near Montrejean, 
which is scored by very similar markings. I would refer, in 
illustration to figs. 75§, 76, 77§, p. 194 of the Reliquic Aqui- 
tanice, and to pl. B. xi., f. 18. 
¢ 
* Vict. Inst., vol. xili., 1879, p. 316. 
+ Journ. Anthrop. Tnst., ‘April 8, 1872, p. 98. Geol. Mag., vol ix., 
1872, p. 247. 
t R. Geol. Soc. Ireland, Dec. 9, 1863; see also Geol. Mag., vol. ii. 
1865, p. 28; Carter, R. Geol. Soc. Ireland, March 8, 1865 ; Geol. Mag. 
vol. ii., 1865, p. 216. 
§ Reproduced in outline, wd. imf., p. 211. 
