^^ 297 



'\ 

 oi flint knives, as abundance of material for tlieir manufac- 

 ture exists in the neighbouring limestones. They may also, 

 as it seems likely the Belgian people of the Reindeer age 

 were accustomed to do, have instituted hattues, and made up 

 quantities of pemmican or preserved meat for subsequent use 

 with the flesh of the animals slaughtered. 



Mr. West, of the Beyrout College, has promised to make 

 further explorations in this cave, and to give particular 

 attention to the teeth of mammals, to any objects of art other 

 than flint knives, and to any stratification that may exist in 

 the deposit. 



Connected with the questions raised by the caverns, are the 

 flint flakes and implements found at the Ras of Beyrout, and 

 I believe first noticed by Mr. Chester in his report to the 

 committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.* 



The oldest rock seen in passing from Beyrout around the 

 point by the Lighthouse and Pigeon Island is the cretaceous 

 limestone, which at this place is remarkably rich in large flint 

 nodules. Upon the limestone rests a soft grey sandstone, 

 used for building in the town, and containing in places frag- 

 ments of recent shells. It is similar in its character to the 

 modern sandstone of the Jafia coast, and is, no doubt, of the 

 same age. At one of the quarries a stratum of indurated deep 

 red sand was seen to occur in the middle of the gi^ey beds, 

 and large sand-pipes, which traverse the grey beds perpen- 

 dicularly, were filled with the same red sand, which also over- 

 lies the grey beds, and forms the surface of the highest part of 

 the point, where it is more or less covered with loose wind- 

 blown sand of a greyish colour. In one place, the lower grey 

 sandstone was seen to be about forty feet in thickness, and the 

 red sand is in some places as much as ten feet in thickness. 

 The summit of these deposits rises as high as 250 feet above 

 the sea-level. These sands are, probably, in great part 

 products of the waste of the red and grey arenaceous beds of 

 the lignitiferous zone of the Lebanon cretaceous, which occurs 

 in the hills some distance behind. They belong to the modern 

 or Pleistocene age, and to a time when the coast was submerged 

 to the amount of 250 feet below its present level. At a place 

 called the Bishop^s Garden, behind Beyrout, and opposite the 

 mouth of the ravine of the Beyrout river, there occurs a thick 

 bed of grey and red conglomerate, capped with red sand, and 

 which I believe to be a more inland representative of the 

 coast deposit. 



* Quarterly Statement. 



