REY. R. A. BULLEN, B.A.. ON EOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS. 223 
say. What right have you to do it on any other? I think we 
shall see with Professor Prestwich that man cannot possibly be 
assigned to an earlier time than the pleistocene. As to the real 
antiquity of man, I think, on competent authority,* it has com- 
pletely broken down in every case where it has been attempted to. 
assign man to an earlier date than post-glacial times. 
Professor EK. Hutt.—I should like to say a word with regard to 
the age of these plateau gravels. I have studied them a good 
deal in various places—the Isle of Wight, at a level of 400 feet 
above the sea, and the counties south of the Thames amongst 
others—and I have satisfied myself that they are certainly not of 
pliocene age. We know what the pliocene strata of the Hast of 
England are very well, but these are entirely different—different 
in position, and different in character—and the conclusion I have 
come to is that they are really neither the early pleistocene nor 
the pliocene, but that they represent the middle pleistocene, in 
other words, the inter-glacial stage. They are representative of 
those beds which, in the North of England and Wales, rise to a 
’ level of 1,100 and 1,200 feet with sea shells of existing species. 
If you go south the level decreases and descends to 600 and 400 
feet in Hants and Dorset, at which height they are very definitely 
shown in central Isle of Wight at St. George’s Downs. They are 
separated from the pliocene beds by that great deposit of early 
boulder clay, or early glacial drift, which is not represented in 
the South of England at all, but which constitutes an important 
member of pleistocene series in the North of England, Scotland, 
and the West of Ireland. 
~ I accept these specimens on the word of Mr. Bullen and Mr. 
Stopes as unquestionably the work of human art; but I would 
take a caveat in assigning them to the early pleistocene, and @ 
fortiori to the pliocene age. I do not think the evidence that Mr. 
Bullen has afforded is at all convincing, and I do not think that 
he would himself say that it was convincing with regard to the 
early pleistocene age. 
On the other hand, I venture to think that they are really 
representative of the middle or inter-glacial period, when there 
* Professor McKenny Hughes, F.R.S, 
