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alluded, it is, doubtless, a very interesting specimen of the flint instrument, 

 and I may add that the flint implements and knives we have obtained 

 from Egypt are as beautiful examples of fine workmanship as we have found 

 anywhere. In the British Museum there are several fine specimens 

 of these highly-finished flint knives from Egypt, which are sure to be of 

 great interest to any one who goes to look at them. With regard to the 

 point referred to as to the similarity prevailing between the implements 

 found in different parts of the world, it would seem that man, in all times 

 and all countries, made them exactly on the same principles. A great deal 

 depends, of course, on the similarity of the materials used ; and then again 

 we must look to the similarity of the social conditions under which men 

 were placed in primitive times, the instincts they had to gratify in accord- 

 ance with those conditions, and the means they found whereby to fulfil their 

 few and simple wants. It would indeed appear that some of our very 

 early ancestors of the human race found out the way to make implements 

 perfectly suited to satisfy these wants, and those who came afterwards 

 adopted the same methods, which they were unable to improve upon. It is 

 true that we have not found palseolithic tools in the very oldest of the 

 Lebanon caves similar to the great, rude, hatchet-like flints discovered in 

 the French and other gravels ; but it is, of course, possible that the very 

 ancient people who lived in that age may have used such implements, not in 

 the vicinity of those caves, but at other stations. We have to take into 

 account the fiict that those old people were like some of their nl'odern 

 descendants, living at one period by the river sides, where the gravels are, 

 and at others in the woods and mountains ; and that they may not have 

 carried the tools and weapons they used at one place into the other where 

 they were not needed, but secreted them in hiding-places after the manner 

 of the American Indians down to the present day. I do not know the 

 actual use or uses of those remarkably rough chisels and axes that are 

 found in the gravels ; but I suppose they were used for the same purposes as 

 the large polished hatchets of a much later age, such as digging the earth, 

 hollowing out wood, and other things of a kindred nature. That, at any 

 rate, is what an American would think of them, and we must bear in mind 

 that in districts like the south of England, as well as in Egypt and Lebanon, 

 where there is plenty of flint, the working and chijDping of flint would be 

 practised in a way that was pretty much the same throughout, but scarcely 

 the same as that adopted where the stone was of a difiFerent kind. In 

 districts where there was jade and green-stone and not flint, the imple- 

 ments would be made difterently from those constructed of flint ; and 

 this leads me to another point. We are, I think, too often apt to 

 attribute to time what really belongs to space, and I feel pretty sure 

 that some of my friends have been led into this error. With regard 

 to the question, how many flakes and bulbs might be made by nature 

 herself ; that is no doubt a very apposite question, and in looking at such a 

 deposit as that at Jebel Assart and taking out the broken stones, one must 

 come to the conclusion that it might possibly be that an accidental stroke 



