XIV 



have been converted into tools more or less serviceable for pur- 

 poses of savage life. Dr. Barham next exhibited some flint flakes 

 which had been sent to him by Mr. Aborn, a gentleman resident 

 at Prince Town, Dartmoor, and remarked that, to his eye, they 

 presented a much stronger appearance of human agency than 

 those which he had found on the Scilly Islands. They were in fact 

 among the best specimens he had ever seen of the smaller class of 

 flint flakes ; but were very different from the larger specimens in 

 the Museum to which the President had alluded, and which bore 

 marks such as might be said to be almost conclusive of human 

 manufacture. He had thought it worth while to send a specimen 

 of them, together with some from the Scilly Islands, to Sir John 

 Lubbock, who had written so ably concerning the prse-historic 

 ages ; and in reply. Sir John said the one from Dartmoor was un- 

 mistakeably worked, while those from Scilly shewed no evi- 

 dence of human interference. Sir John further stated that he 

 could not agree with Mr. Whitley's views about the flakes ; and 

 that some of those exliibited by Mr. Whitley, at the Archaeo- 

 logical Congress, this year, were evidently worked. — The account 

 given by Mr. Aborn of his discovery was as follows : — " The 

 "■ enclosed flints were found in the course of reclaiming some 

 *' of the bog land near the Prison. They were found with others 

 " of the same type, together with many chips and shapeless frag- 

 " ments scattered widely about, under, in some cases, three feet of 

 " peat, and mostly embedded in gravelly clay, as though they had 

 "been thrown there previously to the growth of the moss of 

 " which the peat bog was formed. Peat had of course been cut 

 " from the bog, so that it was formerly much deeper than when 

 ''the process of cultivation was commenced." Supposing that 

 these Dartmoor flints were of human manufacture, the question 

 as to the age when they were made and used was open to discus- 

 sion. Peat, it was well known, accumulated very rapidly in some 

 situations ; and therefore, assuming that the flints were of human 

 manufacture, it did not follow that they were manufactured prior 

 to the period commonly assigned to the first existence of the 

 human race on earth, or to what was called the early historic 

 period. The position in which these flints were found — beneath a 

 stratum of peat — certainly differed from the circumstances in 

 which flints had been discovered in the Valley of the Somme and 

 other districts, of debateable age; but, still, it would probably 

 carry back the date of man's existence to a more distant 

 period than that usually assigned to it, though not to anything 

 like so remote a time as was assigned by some geologists. — With 

 regard to such flints generally, there were two questions : one, 

 whether they were of human manufacture; and it was known 



