1 886-1887.] 541 



M.A., and the Rev. Leonard Hasse, M.R.LA., for similar 

 statements corroborating his views. Opposite this mass of 

 positive evidence we have the opinion of Mr. Gray stated in the 

 Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association 

 of Jnly, 1869, and in the reports of the Field Club, that "the 

 worked flints are not mixed through the gravel, but occur only 

 on the surface of the undisturbed gravels, and, therefore, the men 

 who worked the flints lived subsequent to the formation of the 

 raised beach." The subcommittee appointed by the Field Club 

 to investigate these gravels support Mr. Gray's views, notwith- 

 standing that they found in the section dug by them a flake at 

 the depth of eleven feet six inches. Mr. Knowles argued that 

 if conclusions could be arrived at from merely negative evidence, 

 as had apparently been done by Mr. Gray and the sub-committee, 

 there was not a well-established doctrine in all geological science 

 that could not be overturned. 



The author then stated that not only Avere these flakes and 

 cores found embedded at all depths in the gravels, but he could 

 show that there were grounds for supposing them other than the 

 gravels themselves. There was evidence that the flakes had 

 become weathered, and had obtained a thick, whitish, delft-like 

 crust, covered with porcellaneous glaze before being included in 

 the gravels, and he produced several specimens found at various 

 depths, showing that before being so embedded the exposed 

 edges of the glaze had been worn off, just as we see the glaze 

 worn off pieces of crockery rolled about on the shore at the 

 present day. Besides, he showed that all along the coast, as far 

 as Dublin, the neolithic flint workers— that is, the manufacturers 

 of scrapers and arrowheads — had scarcely any other material 

 than old, thckly-crusted cores to work from ; and he produced 

 examples of old cores re- wrought from Dundrum, County Down, 

 and from Malahide. His opinion was that the older flakes 

 and cores from Larne and Belfast Lough were drifted by 

 currents along the coast, and that people who worked in flint at 

 a later date re-wrought this old material. The flakes and cores 

 of the older series as they were drifted along appear to have 

 become smaller the farther they got away from their source, and, 



