November ii, 1909] NATuRE 



12> 



Mis love for every stone he has found appears 

 throughout the whole bcok, and his grief at the loss 

 of one specimen, of which he has only kept a drawing, 

 is almost pathetic. That he is an amateur in the 

 other sense is clearly shown by his method of pre- 

 senting his case. A careful statement of the 

 evidence which leads him to attribute this or that 

 specimen to the Paheolithic or any age is hardly to 

 be found, while his attitude is one of pure dogmatism 

 with regard to the artificial character of the stones he 

 is principally dealing with. It is manifestly unsafe to 

 judge of such a point as the latter from a drawing 

 alone, and that is all the reviewer has in the 

 [jresent case. But it is not unjust to assume that in 

 Mr. Smith's own drawings of the stones he is dealing 

 with, all the features that lead him to think them to 

 be "artefacts" are shown at their best. Yet to the 

 unprejudiced eye, familiar with man's handiwork in 

 stone under prJtnitive conditions, whether prehistoric 

 or modern, there are very few in Mr. Smith's book 

 that could safely be pronounced "artefacts." 



This may appear to be a hard saying, and in a 

 limited degree it is so, for, in default of some evidence, 

 it is hard to think that the majority of the stones 

 represented in Mr. Smith's figures show any signs of 

 human handiwork. Nevertheless, it is quite conceiv- 

 iible that they may be the best that Scottish Palaeolithic 

 man could produce. But what is wanted is something 

 approaching proof of human intention in the fashion- 

 ing of them. Mr. Smith, in short, has mistaken a 

 much-loved hypothesis for fact. As hypothesis, no 

 one would have found fault with his volume. He has 

 spent much time and many words, moreover, in 

 demolishing phantoms ; for instance, he is apologetic 

 that his "implements " of basalt and similar rocks do 

 not show the familiar "bulb of percussion," so 

 common in flint tools, and yet he surely must know 

 that the fracture of flint differs essentially from that 

 of basalt or granite ; he adduces (p. 14), as proof of 

 the Palaeolithic age of the stones, the fact that he 

 never encountered a polished weapon, as if all tools 

 or weapons of the later ages were polished ; most 

 assuredly the majority are chipped only. He refers to 

 glacial striae in support of the same contention, and 

 for this we would commend to him the vast series of 

 Neolithic scrapers with glacial markings that have 

 been collected by Dr. .\llen Sturge. Two pages of 

 text and three figures are devoted to a single chipped 

 flint, described (and doubtless rightly) as accidental by 

 "a Cambridge expert." Here a claim is made that 

 the facets of the surface are inade to fit the ball of 

 the thumb. As if the human hand had no power of 

 adaptability ! It is very likely that this and other 

 flaked flints, whether the flaking be natural or arti- 

 ficial, will be found to fit the ball of the thumb, but 

 the virtue lies in the thumb, not in the flint. 



One other instance of Mr. Smith's arguments is 

 worth quoting. He was distressed that the flaking on 

 one of his flints had been set down as due to 

 " thermal " causes. This criticism he meets by the 

 statement that he had watched some of his flints pass 

 through all the rigours of Scottish winters for no less 

 a period than twenty long years, and that they showed 

 NO. 2089, VOL. 82] 



no signs of thermal flaking at the end of it. Argu- 

 ments of this kind can only convince the converted, 

 and even the support of Prof. Keane, enthusiastic as 

 he is, will hardly sufiice to carry conviction to the 

 unbiassed. The chapter on Ireland is of a piece with 

 the rest. The author's naive surprise at finding in 

 Ireland precisely the same forms he had been finding 

 in Scotland recalls to one's memory the letter from 

 Egypt of the late Mr. .-Xuberon Herbert, who found 

 there the very same broken edges to flint flakes that 

 he had seen in England, though it must be confessed 

 that Mr. Smith does not go to quite the same lengths 

 as Mr. Herbert. 



A book of this kind makes one sad. Working on a 

 stable foundation, Mr. Smith's pertinacity and en- 

 thusiasm might have enabled him to add his mite to 

 the sum of our knowledge of early man. He has 

 chosen, on the other hand, to follow a will o' the 

 wisp. 



CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY. 

 (i) L'Indiistria delle Maferie Grasse. Vol. i. I Grass! 

 e le Cere. By Dr. S. Facchini. Pp. xxiii-l-651. 

 (Milan : Ulrico Hoepli, 1909.) Price 6.50 lire. 



(2) Gomme, Resine, Gomme-resine e Balsami. By 

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 Hoepli, 1909.) Price 4.50 lire. 



(3) Analisi Chimiche per gli Ingegncri. By Dr. Luigi 

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(4) Die Chemische Industrie. By Gus!*av Miiller unter 

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(5) Chemical Industry on the Continent: a Report to 

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(6) Laboratory Guide of Industrial Chemistry. By 

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(i, 2 and 3)'T^HESE three volumes belong to the 

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Dr. Medri 's little book on analysis is a compilation 

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