Reviews — Robinson's Flints, Fancies, and Facts. 39 



II. — Flints, Fancies, and Facts ; a Eeview of Sir Charles Lyell's 

 "Antiquity of Man," and similar Works.^ By William Eobin- 

 SON, of Cambridge. London : Longmans. 8vo. 1871. pp. 28. 

 (Witb. a lithographic plate.) 



THE author of this little pamphlet, who is doubtless " a burning 

 and a shining light" in his own small circle at Cambridge, has 

 been drawn to make a few observations on the ignes fatui of the 

 scientific world whose false beams have obscured, though doubtless 

 only for a season, the light shed by Mr. William Eobinson. The 

 names of these false luminaries specially selected for extinction are 

 Boucher de Perthes, Lyell, Lubbock, Lartet, and Christy, and Mr. 

 John Evans. 



Mr. Eobinson writes more in pity than in anger of these men. 

 " Surprisingly strong," he observes, " as may be their prejudices, 

 alien as are their principal conclusions from their premisses, the 

 dupes, as .we conceive them to be, of one fondly cherished illusion, 

 and the not blameless propagators of dangerous errors, it is due to 

 them to say that their writings contain proofs of their readiness to 

 confess mistakes into which they had previously fallen, and abound 

 with proofs of their desire to describe with honest accuracy what 

 they have seen" (p. 1). 



We regret that we are unable to attribute the same candour and 

 honesty of purpose to the author of this pamphlet ; for, wishing to 

 throw doubt and discredit on the discovery of flint inplements of 

 undoubted human manufacture in the drift, he has selected for 

 figuring some of the most rude examples which he could find, and 

 those not from the drift, but from the far more recent though still 

 historically speaking ancient encampments, and from the surface- 

 soil ; and lest even these poor chips should speak and confound him 

 before his hearers, he turns their faces to the wall, and so has them 

 figured ! ^ 



The existence of the more highly finished forms of implements 

 from the river gravels he entirely ignores. 



That the selection of these particular chips (part of a series pre- 

 sented by Mr. John Evans, F.E.S., F.S.A., to the Fitzwilliam 

 Museum, in Cambridge) was designed intentionally to throw dis- 

 credit upon the whole inquiry, and also upon one of our most able 

 investigators and best authorities upon stone-implements of all ages, 

 cannot be doubted ; but, fortunately, Mr. Evans's high reputation as 



1 "This Eeview appeared in the 'London Quarterly Review,' in October, 1871, 

 but without the pictorial illustration." — Note by the Author. 



2 Every one who has taken the troiible to examine a wrought flint flate will re- 

 member that on the side next the core from which the flake was struck they are smooth 

 and slightly concave longitudinally, with a raised mark at one end indicating " the 

 bulb of percussion," whilst on the outside they usually show a ridge, or two or more 

 nearly parallel longitudinal ridges or lines, where other flakes, previously struck off 

 the core, had separated from them ; or they give evidence of side-chippings when the 

 flint has been worked subsequently. The flints as figured by Mr. Eobinson are but 

 fragments of wrought flakes, bvit they, of course, conceal any trace of this chipping 

 or grooving, being, as we have said, turned away from the spectator, and only exhibit 

 their smooth inner side. Even this is so coarsely and rudely printed in the litho- 

 graph that any evidence they might have afforded in this position is lost. 



