262 THE EEV. J. MAGENS MELLO, M.A.^ E.G.S.^ ETC., 



cave accumulations, the implements found are of a higliei" order, 

 and they are formed from flakes and not natural nodules, and 

 these are associated with the remains of animals of later date, 

 until in the most recent deposits the relics of the polished stoue 

 and bronze period, and domestic animals, are met with. 



The most ancient men took up a naturally shaped stoue and simply 

 chipped it, as nearly as they could, into the form they required, 

 and such flakes as they produced were made without method, and 

 so they continued to work for a long period By-and-bye sorae- 

 body more clever than the rest found out that if he selected a 

 suitable nodule and trimmed it so as to form a plane at the top, 

 and then struck it vertically with a rounded hammer-stone, he 

 could produce long slender flakes, which he could, by secondary 

 work, convert into spear-heads, knives, borers, and other tools. 

 There is evidence of such an advance in the later part of the 

 Palasolithic period, though the older forms still continued in use. 

 This method of working flint was in fact the same as that of the 

 gun-flint maker of to-day. At the Palteolithic working-place 

 which I discovered at Acton, I found a large number of imple- 

 ments almost all of which were formed from flakes. There may 

 be some persons here who have tried to strike ofp a long flak^, but 

 let me say until you have watched a gun-flint maker at work, and 

 adopted his method, you will not succeed in making one. It is 

 very interesting to trace the development of human ingenuity 

 from distant times, and to notice how man learnt in time to make 

 long flakes and more specialized instruments. 



In the Thames Valley we find evidence of all these stages of 

 human progress, and there is a great deal of interest still attaching 

 to flint implements and much to learn from them. 



The Chairman. — I would only just make one remark, and say 

 that putting aside other considerations, which, to me, have great 

 weight, i.e., the appearance of higher and higher races from the 

 early Tertiary down to the human period, when man, admittedly 

 the highest work of creation, came upon the scene, if there 

 had been Pleistocene or Miocene man either in Europe or 

 America, where the deposits alluded to are abundantly developed, 

 and where those remains have been studied with the greatest 

 care, we should have found, not an odd, suspicious-looking, and 

 doubtful implement of art but we should have found hundreds 

 or thousands of them, because these flint implements are 

 imperishable in their nature ; and that is one reason why they 



