258 



its site ; and there is also no trace of anything like protective 

 works, such as are seen around the camps of other parts of 

 Belgium, as, for instance, that of Hastedon, previously 

 referred to. 



The Spiennes flints are easily recognised when met with 

 elsewhere, the grey colour of the flint contrasting with the 

 yellowish stone of other localities, is one feature; and the 

 surface-found implements are also incrusted with a white 

 ''patine,'^ which is very generally discoloured with ferruginous 

 stains along the angles of their faces, — stains probably con- 

 tracted through the friction of the iron of ploughs, and of 

 other agricultural tools used in the fields. 



Far and wide over Belgium we frequently come across these 

 Spiennes flints ; in the Ardennes, in Flanders, as well as in 

 many places nearer to the ancient factory itself, implements 

 are found which must have been brought thence. 



An interesting question arises in connexion with the Pre- 

 historic implements. We have noticed already how, in lower 

 portions of the series of beds in which they ai^e found, the 

 tools of Palaeolithic man, the contemporary of the extinct 

 Pleistocene fauna occur. Is M. Dupont right in supposing 

 that there has been a direct derivation the one from the other, 

 and are these Neolithic forms but the more advanced eflbrts 

 of the same race of men, and not, as seems to be generally 

 thought the case, the workmanship of a totally distinct people ? 

 There is certainly a strange similarity in form between some 

 of the Spiennes surface flints and those of the St. Acheul 

 type which underlie them; whilst, upon the other hand, we 

 have to face the almost total change in the fauna, — a change 

 as distinctly shown in the Spiennes beds as elsewhere, 

 and which must have involved a great change in climate, 

 and probably also in the physical conditions of the 

 country, through all of which, if the view under consideration 

 is to be accepted, the hunters and fishermen of the Palgeo- 

 lithic age must have continued to flourish and make progress 

 until at length they developed into the somewhat more settled 

 race of Neolithic times, possessed of domestic cattle, and 

 having various industries and arts previously unknown or 

 unpractised by tlieir ancestors ; then, side by side with these 

 are we to consider the cave men, of whom there are such 

 abundant traces in Belgium, as well as elsewhere, to have 

 been contemporaries of these dwellers in the valleys, but 

 possibly of a difierent race ? and is their apparently sudden 

 extinction to be attributed, as M. Dupont suggests, to the 

 attacks of the hardier valley tribes, by whom they were 

 exterminated ? Here, again, we have to face the difficulty 



