232 Reviews — Guide to Antiquities of the Stone Age. 



more elevated level in the shape of terraces covered with beds of 

 old river- valley gravel (containing flint implements), of which the 

 highest is really the oldest. Even outside the limits of its valley 

 we find that still older watercourses have flowed along, and in places 

 spread sheets of gravel over the plateau far above the reach of any 

 modern flood-waters. In this very ancient gravel implements of a far 

 ruder type than those commonly known as ' PalEeolithic ' are met 

 with. These have been accepted as weapons made by some early 

 and most uncivilized race of mankind, and are termed ' Eoliths,' good 

 examples of which, collected by the Eev. R. Ashington Bullen, may 



Fig. 4. — Chopping tool, province of Poitou. (Fig. 29, p. 32 in Guide.) \ nat. size. 



be seen figured in Plates VI and VII of this Magazine for March 

 last (pp. 102-110). "It is not" says Mr. Read (p. 10), "the 

 province of the present Guide to enter into the arguments which 

 have been brought forward against or in favor of the artificial 

 character of Eoliths, but it may be said that whether their claims 

 can be substantiated or not, the existence of implements of a ruder 

 kind than those of the drift is in itself not improbable. For no 

 invention x*eaches perfection suddenly, and each stage of advance is 

 attained by an infinitely slow progress from the simple to the more 



