* . 



V 



276 THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE. 



The questions to be decided may be stated as follows : 

 1st. Are the so-called flint implements of human work- 

 manship ? 



Sndly. Are the flint implements of the same age as the 

 beds in which they are found, and the bones of the extinct 

 animals with which they occur ? 



3rdly. What are the conditions under which these beds 

 were deposited ? and how far are we justified in imputing to 

 them a great antiquity ? 



To the first two of these questions an affirmative answer 

 would be given, almost unanimously, by those geologists who 

 have given any special attention to the subject. Fortunately, 

 however, for the sake of the discussion, there is one exception ; 

 Blackwood's Magazine for October, 1860, contains an able 

 article in which the last two questions are maintained to be 

 still unanswered, and in which, therefore, a verdict of " Not - 

 Proven " is demanded. Not, indeed, that there is any dif- 

 ference of opinion as to the weapons themselves. "They 

 bear," admits the writer (p. 438), "unmistakeably the indica- 

 tions of having been shaped by the skill of man." " For more 

 than twenty years," says another competent witness Prof. 

 Ramsay, " I have daily handled stones, whether fashioned by 

 nature or art, and the flint hatchets of Amiens and Abbeville 

 seem to me as clearly works of art as any Sheffield whittle."* 

 But best of all, an hour or two spent in examining the 

 forms of ordinary flint gravel, would, I am sure, convince 

 any man that these stones, rude though they be, are unde- 

 niably fashioned by the hand of man. 



Still, it might be supposed that they were forgeries, made by 

 ingenious workmen to entrap unwary geologists. They have, 

 however, been found by Messrs. Boucher de Perthes, Henslow, 

 Christy, Flower, Wyatt, Evans, myself, and others. One seen, . 

 though not found by himself in situ, is thus described by 



* Athenaeum, July 16, 1859. 



