Notes and Comments. 259 



THE GOATSTONE. 



With this extraordinary title Mr. Reginald Smith 

 described a piece of liver-coloured quartzite, from which 

 a flake had been broken, probably by a plough, and had been 

 picked up by a coUecter and placed in his cabinet merely 

 because of the nature of the stone. While a friend 

 happened to be looking through this particular cabinet he 

 noticed some cracks formed as a result of the flake, and with 

 a little imagination it might possibly be assumed that these 

 were in the form of a dancing Goat with its nose in the air. On 

 the other hand, with the same imagination it might be con- 

 sidered as representing as great a variety of objects as one 

 can see faces in a fire. But to suggest for one moment 

 that upon this stone was graven, by human hands in probably 

 palaeolithic times, a representation of a Goat, or any other 

 animal, is simply absurd. In the first place, the stone itself 

 could not possibly be carved in the way shown by any imple- 

 ment in the possession of palaeolithic man, and in the second 

 place any geologist could explain the accidental resemblance 

 to a mythical animal by the ordinary process of flaking, just 

 as the bulb of percussion in Flints frequently resembles' a 

 cockle shell. To produce this particular object at the same 

 meeting as the alleged palaeolithic drawings on the Flint 

 nodules did not help matters, and while much was made of 

 the fact that some geologists considered the stone to be Sand- 

 stone and others considered it to be quartzite, the fact remains 

 that the alleged Goat is purely a natural feature which has 

 aiot the advantage even of resembling a Goat. 



MORE MOIR. 



J. R. Moir, in N attire for June 9th, describes two flint 

 implements found in situ in the surface of the ferruginous 

 ' pan ' or stone bed resting on the chalk at Cromer. He refers 

 to the alleged geological age of the pan, speaks of ochreous 

 artefacts, bulbar surfaces, radiating fissures, eraillure, and, as 

 usual, to his own previous publications. But for all that the 

 •great geological age of specimens found embedded in the 

 surface of a ferruginous pan is open to question. A little 

 while ago, on the beach at Flamborough, a small mass of 

 ferruginous conglomerate was found in which, thoroughly 

 ■embedded, was a typical neolithic ' scraper ' as well as several 

 beach pebbles. The ' conglomerate ' proved to be formed 

 upon a horse-shoe, but no one assumed that the horse-shoe 

 was neolithic in date or that the scraper was made during the 

 past fifty years. More recently, on an excursion to South 

 Ferriby, firmly embedded in a ferruginous ' pan ' at the base 

 of the boulder clay cliff, was a trousers button. It had to be 

 broken out. But no Yorkshire Geologist has yet written to 



1921 Aug. 1 



