1891-92.] 4 11 



to be cautious and wait for further evidence before speaking of 

 them as worked flints. I prefer at present to call them flint 

 flakes. These flakes are not of the finest quality, but they have 

 the bulb of percussion and some other characteristics of artifi- 

 cially-produced flakes. Two are of good size, about 3 in. long 

 by about 2\ in. broad. One of these is an outside flake — that 

 is, it shows on one side the outside crust of the pebble from 

 which it was struck ; the other shows only part of the original 

 crust. These two are only slightly weathered. A third one, 

 scarcely so large, is also an outside flake, whitened by weathering 

 on the face, which has the bulb of percussion. There are six 

 other small flakes, from an inch to an inch and half long by 

 about three-quarters of an inch broad, some of which show 

 dressing as if they had been used as scrapers. The tenth flake 

 is one of those three-sided flakes which have a bulb on the front 

 or broadest face and depressions on the other faces. It has had 

 a whitened or weathered crust all over, which has scaled off 

 almost entirely from the two back facets, just sufficient remaining 

 on one side to show the depression, wh ; ch, like the bulb, is 

 considered to be an indication of artificial character. 



In addition to the flakes I found several core-like objects 

 which are very similar to cores produced by human agency. It 

 seems to be a sort of doctrine that we need not look for worked 

 flints or implements of stone in Ireland older than the neolithic 

 age, because that Ireland, Scotland, and the North of England 

 were covered by glaciers when palaeolithic man lived in the 

 South of England and made the flint weapons which we find 

 there associated with the remains of extinct animals. But I 

 think it has been proved that man was of Glacial age in Europe, 

 and that we have had interglacial periods when he could nave 

 lived in this country. Dr. James Geikie says in Pre-historic 

 Europe, pp. 347 and 348, that " When the last interglacial 

 epoch was attained a climate approximating to that of Pliocene 

 times characterised our continent." If this interpretation is 

 correct, and I believe Dr. Geikie has interpreted Glacial pheno- 

 mena more correctly than some English geologists, we might 



