322 Hevieics — Brief Notices. 



to several hundred-weights here and there in the mass". Evidence, 

 however, is given of the occurrence of glaciated specimens at Crieff, 

 and the discovery induced the author to read a paper on " Evidences 

 of Palseolithic Man in Scotland" at the meeting of the British 

 Association at Edinburgh in 1892, and, as he remarks, "the approach 

 to that great Society was the reverse of encouraging." As a rule, the 

 specimens brought forward by Mr. Smith exhibit no evidence of 

 chipping or flaking, but rather give the idea that the stones are mostly 

 natural in shape but modified by rubbing and polishing until they have 

 assunaed a serviceable foi'm. Large examples are mentioned from 10 to 

 17 inches in length and occasionally weighing as much as 20 lb. A 

 scale of size attached to each figure would have been useful. Among 

 the ' Domestic Forms ' are pebbles simply broken, with flat, smoothed 

 surfaces, and other more roughly shaped stones with similar surfaces. 

 These implements are grouped as Palaeolithic 'flat-irons'. "We have 

 seen broken flint-pebbles with polished ends from the Cannon-shot 

 gravels of Mousehold, Norwich, where a number were collected by 

 Mr. J. T. Hotblack. They may have been utilized as rubbers or 

 pounders. The author figures sundry forms of implements with 

 handles which may have been serviceable as choppers or knives, and 

 others that would appear to have been fashioned after the shape of 

 bones or jaws, one example being referred to as likely to " have done 

 as good service in the hands of Samson as the historic ass's jaw-bone". 

 Some specimens are described as "chisel-like and broad-edged and 

 bell-shaped polished axes" of Neolithic type, and yet of great 

 antiquity, suggesting that there was no great void in time between the 

 epochs of Palaeolithic and Neolithic Man. 



The author writes with enthusiasm, but at times with a confidence 

 that is not justified, as for instance when he refers to glaciated flints 

 from the Thames gravel at Datchet. In drawing attention to the 

 many specimens he has gathered in Scotland and to the remarkably 

 similar forms he has obtained in Ireland, he has done a service to 

 students of Prehistoric Archaeology. Others will be stimulated to 

 investigate the subject. The absence of an index is a serious draw- 

 back to the utility of the volume. 



III. — Beief Notices. 

 The New Zealand Geological Survey has issued a memoir on "The 

 Geology of the Cromwell Subdivision, Western Otago Division", 

 1908, by Mr. James Park, Professor of Mining and Mining Geology 

 in the University of Otago. The country dealt with is a mountainous 

 one, rising to heights ranging from 4000 to 7600 feet on the 

 borders of the mountain plateaux, while the valleys are mostly 

 narrow rocky defiles. The county town, Cromwell, with about 600 

 inhabitants, is situated on a river terrace at the junction of the 

 Clutha and Kawarau Rivers. The prevailing rocks are mica- schists, 

 most probably belonging to altered Palaeozoic formations ; they 

 contain bands of chlorite schist, which are regarded as altered 

 contemporary volcanic rocks, and also a dyke of serpentine. In the 

 Cromwell basin there is a great thickness of Pliocene freshwater 

 beds, with seams of lignite of great economic value. Following this 



