428 Correspondence — F. D. Bennett — A. R. Hunt. 



a race of men of similar habits and modes of life, and because 

 such is not the ease dismisses them with a sarcasm. All hairy 

 animals do scratch a great deal, and even Job scraped himself, and 

 so we may infer that scraping with a kind of 'scraper' was 

 common in his by no means very early period. He expects man 

 to have sprung at one bound over the vast period that separates 

 him from the mere animal to that of the comparatively highly 

 specialized being he was in the Paleeolithic period. He thus ignores 

 the fact that the rudest existing savage, who lives mostly on roots, 

 and so needs very few tools of any kind, was far surpassed by 

 Palaeolithic man, the hunter of the Mammoth, etc. 



In reference to the implements from the Forest Bed we regard 

 them as Eoliths, and even Sir John Evans would hardly class them 

 as Pala3oliths. Also Eoliths do occur with the Palseoliths both on 

 the plateau and in the valley gravels. Again, as to M. Boucher 

 de Perthes, an exact parallelism exists between his case and that 

 of Mr. Harrison, and one has only to substitute the one name 

 for the other in Sir Henry's account ; yet Sir Henry evidently 

 cannot see the identity of position ; one wonders much if he 

 would have been on the side of M. Boucher de Perthes. We 

 maintain, too, that Mr. Harrison's case is the stronger, as he has 

 had all the past experience of others to aid him, coupled with the 

 extensive knowledge he has gained since. Sir Henry speaks of 

 thousands of shapeless stones with no classification ; let him call 

 and see Mr. Harrison's collection with an open mind. Is it likely 

 that the men who find and bring these stones to those who collect 

 them — and they do not bring them by cartloads — could do so unless 

 they perceived that these objects had a distinctive type of their own. 



But I must now leave Sir Henry to those whom he has directly 

 attacked by name ; they will no doubt answer him in greater detail 

 and more conclusively. F. D. Bennett. 



West Mailing. 



THE LATE EEV. J. McENERY. 



Sir, — Eeferring to Sir Henry Howorth's suggestion that Professor 

 Huxley was instrumental in suppressing McEnery's Kents Cavern 

 evidence,^ it is important to bear in mind that McEnery died in 

 1841, when Huxley was 16 years of age; that McEnery's 

 MSS. were left in an incomplete state ; that they are in the 

 possession of the Torquay Natural History Society ; and that they 

 were never in the custody of the Eoyal Society. The suppression 

 of the Kents Cavern and Brixham Cave evidence is a very long 

 story, and one long subsequent to McEnery's death. The late 

 Edward Vivian, in 1859, in his " Cavern Eesearches " published 

 the pith of McEnery's investigations, and subsequently Pengelly 

 published McEnery's MSS. in their entirety, so far as they have 

 been preserved, verbatim ei literatim. A. E. Hunt. 



Southwood, Torquay. 

 August 10, 1901. 



1 Geol. Mag., August, 1901, p. 340. 



