544 Flint Implements. 



thesis, since in many cases they are not estuarine, for 

 they contain no sea-shells, but only land and fresh- 

 water species, mingled with occasional trunks of trees, 

 and the bones of mammalia, some of which are of 

 extinct species. 



I have previously stated that bone-caves in Britain as 

 caves, may have been of pre-Grlacial date, and the 

 occurrence of worked flints along with extinct mam- 

 mals in the Victoria Cave, shows that there man is 

 either of inter-Grlacial or pre-Grlacial age, for, at the 

 mouth of the cavern, Boulder-clay lay over the sedi- 

 ments that contained these remains, as proved by Mr. 

 Tiddeman (see p. 465). In like manner I am satisfied 

 that Mr. Skertchly has nearly proved to demonstration 

 the occurrence of flint implements in brick-earth 

 beneath the Chalky Boulder-clay of the neighbourhood 

 of Brandon, this brick-earth being probably of inter- 

 Glacial age, for the Chalky Boulder-clay is, in his 

 opinion, not one of the earliest glacial deposits. I 

 have also shown, by the testimony of many accurate in- 

 vestigations, that in the bone-caves of Somersetshire and 

 Devonshire the works of man occur with extinct mam- 

 mals, and the same is the case in the ancient gravels 

 of the Thames and other rivers. 



Arguing on these points, Mr. James Greikie says : 

 ' If palaeolithic deposits have a very limited range, such 

 is not the case with those of neolithic age (fig. 113). 

 Implements belonging to this latter age occur every- 

 where throughout the British Islands. From Caithness 

 to Cornwall, and from the east coast of England to the 

 western borders of Ireland they are continually being 

 picked up. Even in the bleak Orkney and Shetland 

 Islands, and all over the inner and outer Hebrides, relics 

 of neolithic times have been met with, so that the wide 



