502 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



After other observations of less importance the members arrived at this con- 

 •clusion that to the present the hygienic quaUties of electric illumination are in- 

 sufficiently appreciated. 



A MANUFACTORY OF PREHISTORIC FLINTS. 



As evervbody knows alimentary articles to the last are falsified ; old furni- 

 ture and antique faiences are imitated with a perfection causing the despair of 

 true amateurs ; but until now they have dared to touch prehistoric objects only 

 very timidly. That seemed to be an industry, impossible of exploitation, with 

 success and profit. 



A sugar refiner of Picardy, ornamented with the pre-name of Polydorus, has 

 proved less hesitating; to the refining of sugar, he decided to add a factory of 

 Cibelots of ancient ages. The stone age appeared to him an excellent epoch to 

 ■cause to fructify, in Picardy above all, which is much thronged by archseologists 

 and anthropologists. Then this was an industry, the founding of which, exacted 

 no great amount of capital, the handiwork and the first material are so low 

 priced. A grindstone and some flints, and the manufacture is started. 



By this means, as simple as ingenious, our Picardian Polydorus has sold at 

 high price to an archaeologist of the environs of Beauvais a varied collection of 

 ■ flint arms, a collection composed of a thousand objects, hatchets, knives, arrow- 

 heads, etc., as coming from a sepulcher discovered in a quarry. 



The Anthropological Society of Paris, to whom these were submitted as an 

 extraordinary find, found them, despite their beauty, despite their perfect imita- 

 tion, of an authenticity no little doubtful. A commission was named to work 

 new trenches in the neighborhood of the sepulchres from whence proceeded the 

 'Objects in question. They discovered nothing like sepulchres of the stone age, 

 but M. Mortillet, president of the commission, whose competency in questions of 

 this nature is well known, had no delay in making another discovery, which was 

 that M. Polydorus was a brazen-faced " mystificator." 



We relate this story to put collectors on guard against such frauds. 



ANOTHER PREHISTORIC MAN. 



Some human remains, evidently of great antiquity, says the Academy, were 

 discovered a few months ago. at Carabacel, near Nice, and have been reported 

 upon by a local scientific committee, as well as examined by M. de Quatrefages. 

 The bones had not been artificially interred, but were found embedded in a de- 

 posit of calcareous clay, at a depth of about nine feet from the surface. This de- 

 posit was irregularly stratified, and contained a mixture of pliocene and eocene 

 shells, showing that it had been formed by the reconstruction of the pre-existing 

 strata. Of the bones the most remarkable is the lower jaw. This is sufficiently 

 characteristic to enable De Quatrefages to refer it to the Cro-Magnon type. The 

 fossil man of Nice, therefore, belongs to the same race as M. Riviere's skeleton 

 from Mentone, both being probably of Paleolithic age. 



