424 Reviews — W. M. Neivton — Figure Stones. 



III. — Photographic Supplement to Stanford's Geological Atlas 

 OF Grkat Britain and Ireland. Arranged and edited by 

 H. B. Woodward, F.R.S., with the co-operation of Miss H. D, 

 Sharps. 8vo; pp. 113, with 108 plates. London: Edward 

 Stanford, Ltd., 1913. Price 4s. net. 



A WAKM welcome is assured to this supplement to the Geological 

 _l\_ Atlas. The editor, collecting his material from numerous 

 sources, has selected 108 photographs of the most typical sections in 

 the British Isles. Great care has been exercised in the choice of 

 negatives, and the printing is good. The photographs are reproduced 

 as half-page plates, each being accompanied by a brief explanatory 

 notice with references to original publications and to the maps 

 in the Geological Atlas. The arrangement is as far as possible 

 chronological, and there is a good index of formations, localities, and 

 authors, so that the book is one of ready reference. 



IV. — Figure Stones. 

 On Pal^olu'hic Figures of Flint found in the Old River 

 Alluvia of England and France, and called Figure Stones. 

 By W. M. Newton, F. R. Anthrop.Inst. Reprinted from the 

 Journal of the British Archaeological Association, March, 1913. 

 8vo. London : at the Bedford Press. 



THE fantastic forms assumed by flints in the Chalk are familiar 

 to everyone who has visited sections in the upper strata of that 

 formation, and forms suggestive of many different kinds of animals — 

 birds, beasts, reptiles, and fishes — have been rudely modelled by 

 Nature. These have sometimes been actually taken to represent the 

 creatures themselves in a fossilized condition, as in the "Facts and 

 Fossils adduced to prove the Deluge of Noah", by Major-General 

 Twemlow (see Geol. Mag. for 1869, p. 81). In other geological 

 formations nodules of ironstone and argillaceous limestone sometimes 

 assume forms suggestive of diiferent animals, as in the concretions 

 of the Champlain Clays of the Connecticut Valley, described by 

 Mr. J. M. a. Sheldon (see Nature, April 11, 1901). 



The specimens to which Mr. Newton directs special attention have 

 been obtained by him and by workmen in his employ from a gravel- 

 pit at Dartford in Kent, and they consist of flint-stones that have 

 probably in all cases been naturally derived from the Chalk and 

 embedded in the ancient valley gravel. At the same time it is not 

 impossible that Palaeolithic Man might have picked up some flints 

 from the talus of a chalk clifi'. 



Forms described and figured by Mr. Newton have rude resemblances 

 to fishes, birds, a tortoise, deer, horse, rhinoceros, elephant, etc., but 

 he does not as a rule suggest any definite identification. The 

 allegation is that these and other stones attracted the attention of 

 Palaeolithic Man, that he recognized a rude sort of animal form, and 

 touched up the stones, where he could improve the resemblance, by 

 chipping cavities for eyes, nose, or mouth, and in other ways slightly 

 modifying the natural shape of the flints. There is nothing absurd 

 or impossible in the suggestion. The pictorial engravings of various 



