128 F. J. Bennett — EolUhic Implements at Belfast. 



first stages as adaptable to man's primitive needs, when first conscious 

 that some tool as an adjunct to the hand would be a useful supple- 

 ment to that member) to modifications by rude chipping of that 

 natural form into more and more artificial forms ; and these 

 gradations are of course very difiicult to follow. This renders it 

 necessary that no opinion should be formed unless a large series of 

 these so-called implements has been examined, such as Dr. Blackmore's 

 at Salisbury (which converted two of my late colleagues) and 

 Mr. Harrison's at Ightham. The latter, none of the objectors had 

 seen, though by some misunderstanding the Section thought they 

 had. As to their being all due to natural causes, such as ice- 

 pressure, wave and river action, this objection has been very 

 fully met by the late Su- Joseph Prestwich in his letter "Nature 

 and Art," in the Geological Magazine, Dec. IV, Vol. II, No. 374, 

 p. 375, August, 1895. There he repeats a former challenge for any- 

 one to produce half a dozen shore-flints of any of the plateau types 

 figured in the five plates that he published in his " Collected Papers," 

 and no one has yet produced these. 



Still, I might add, undoubted palseoliths have been found in beds 

 where all these causes have had full play ; not so certain, indeed, in the 

 case of ice-action, though implements with parallel strise similar to 

 ice-markings are not uncommon ; and where waves, as in the case 

 of the Palasolithic implements found at the base of sea-cliffs, have 

 bruised and battered them, man's work stands out still, and the 

 same remark applies to implements found in the river-gravels. 

 Besides this, no one has yet made a collection similar to 

 Mr. Harrison's, of ice-, wave-, or river-formed specimens. As to the 

 statement that they are similar to the flints (and this is what 

 Professor Boyd Dawkins meant, I suppose) of the Clay-with-Flints, 

 none have been found in this deposit ; they are found in a distinct 

 gravel-bed, at an altitude of 755 feet O.D. Then, as to the statement 

 that Pala3olithic implements are found in the same deposits as the 

 high-level Eolithic implements, it is true that in one or two instances 

 a Palaeolithic implement was dug up, but how or when is not known. 

 On the contrary, the evidence of the two pits sunk by Mr. Harrison 

 in 1894, with the grant made by the British Association, shows that 

 the gravel-bed at 1\ feet yielded a considerable number of Eolithic 

 implements only, and the five additional pits sunk by Mr. Harrison 

 to satisfy himself confirmed this. The objection that, as man is 

 post-Glacial, therefore he cannot be pre-Glacial, is a mere dogmatic 

 assertion. Again, the stony loam, the first bed met with in the 

 above pits, cannot surely be Clay-with-Flints, as it rests on a gravel- 

 bed, which lies on 27 feet of Tertiary beds, and not on Chalk, as 

 Clay-with-Flints should. 



Thus, I think that all the objections have been fairly considered 

 and met. 



But in spite of the opposition to the acceptance of the eoliths, 

 Mr. Harrison and his supporters must be gratified to find them 

 occupying so important a place in the recent Geological Survey 

 Memoir on Sheet 314 of " The Geology of the Country around 



