Reports and Proceedings — Geological Society of London. 235 



handiwork, or to assume that they were made by anthropoid apes. 

 The search for evidence of man's existence before the drift-gravels 

 of the present river-systems of Western Europe were deposited is, 

 at any rate, justified by analogy, though how long before, zoology 

 and anthropology must decide. What is quite certain is that the 

 extreme rudeness of a chipped flint is not in itself a ground for 

 its rejection as the work of man." (p. 11.) 



The time and space at our disposal will not permit us to do 

 adequate justice to Mr. Bead's excellent Guide, which must certainly 

 take a foremost place among such works, of which the Museums of 

 Bloomsbury and Cromwell Road now possess a most admirable series. 



We have borrowed only 10 out of the 199 illustrations which adorn 

 this work, 142 being given in the text, while 57 half-tone figures 

 make up ten beautifully printed process plates. The illustrations 

 are for the most part original, and give examples of weapons of 

 every form, country, and stage of development in the Age of Stone, 

 Polishing appears to mark the later and more advanced period of 

 culture, but when we examine the exquisite workmanship of the 

 chipped and unpolished chert knives from Egypt, one is led to marvel 

 at the very fine art in the manufacture of weapons in flint to which 

 the ancient Egyptians must have attained before they were able to 

 fabricate such lovely knife-blades in silex. In addition to several 

 geological sections and views of ancient and modern pile-dwellings, 

 there are about twenty drawings of carved bones, and pictures of 

 animals on bone, given to complete this charming little book on the 

 ' Stone Age.' 



We have but to add that the price is only one shilling and 

 everyone, we feel sure, will buy a copy. 



s,:e:pos,ts j^istid leieocEiEiDiisra-s. 



Geological Society of London. 



I.— March 11th, 1903.— Prof. C. Lapworth, LL.D., F.E.S., President, 

 in the Chair. The following communications were read : — 



1. " Petrological Notes on Eocks from Southern Abyssinia 

 collected by Dr. Eeginald Koettlitz." By Catherine A. Eaisin, D.Sc. 

 (Communicated by Professor T. G. Bonney, D.Sc, F.E.S., F.G.S.) 



The specimens described in this paper were collected by 

 Dr. Koettlitz on an expedition (in 1898-99), starting from Berbera, 

 westward through Somaliland and Southern Abyssinia, and turning 

 northward to the Blue Nile. The paper gives petrological notes on 

 the different classes of rocks represented. The crystalline rocks 

 include granite, gneiss, and hornblende-schist or foliated diorite, 

 together with more basic types. They occur where the plateau 

 rises from the coastal plain, farther west underlying volcanic rocks 

 and sedimentary strata, in the south-west of Abyssinia, and towards 

 the Sudan. Some of the gneisses exhibit pressure effects, as if these 

 older masses had been thrust up. The more basic types include 

 diabase, hornblende -gabbro, and one lustre-mottled hornblende- 

 pyroxenite, resembling a picrite. 



