Vol. 70.] PROCEEDINGS OF TIIE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. ix 



terrace-gravels, as was also the case in the Somme Valley. This 

 did not preclude the possibility of Drift-forms occurring in gravels 

 at higher or lower horizons ; and recent discoveries on the North 

 Downs and other sites in the South-East of England suggested 

 that some of the beds mapped as Plateau-Gravel were laid down 

 or re-arranged in the period named after St. Acheul. 



The President (Dr. A. Strahan) then invited discussion on 

 the above-mentioned exhibits. 



Discussion, 



Mr. Walter Johnson asked whether it was a fact that, at 

 depths below 6 to 8 feet on the Kentish plateau, Eoliths only were 

 found. The objection against the selection of types should not be 

 pressed too far : for while, in extreme cases, selection resulted in an 

 assemblage of absurd ' figure flints,' yet it was actually the plan 

 followed in identifying Palseoliths — the searcher looked for imple- 

 ments that corresponded to known types, which from previous 

 experience he had come to regard as artefacts. Since Mr. Haward, 

 in a recent paper, admitted that a few of the Eoliths might have 

 been ' humanly chipped,' and since Prof. Sollas at the British 

 Association a few years ago seemed willing to accept 1 or 2 per 

 cent, as genuine, would it not be well for those gentlemen to 

 indicate exactly which specimens they considered to show human 

 workmanship, so as to help in the attainment of an approximate 

 standard of agreement ? 



Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins said that this admirable exhibition 

 brought clearly before them the fact, recognized by the French 

 archaeologists, that flints can be so broken by natural causes as to 

 simulate the forms that have been made by Man — flakes and 

 variously-chipped blocks. Consequently, in dealing Avith the 

 antiquity of Man, it is necessary that the specimens on which it is 

 based should be clearly proved to be artefacts. This, in his opinion, 

 had not been proved in the case of the Ipswich finds, on which 

 Mr. J. R. Moir and Sir E. Ray Lankester based their conclusion 

 that Man was living in Suffolk in the Pliocene Age. The supposed 

 artefacts are probably caused b\ T the pressure of the dead weight of 

 gravel on the move down the slopes, or by other pressure, such as 

 that of ice. On the question of the age of the deposits in which 

 they are found, the archaeologists must refer to Geology as a final 

 court of appeal. They have no right to invent glacial periods, or 

 to correlate strata in Britain with the glaciers in the Alps. 



The ' Eoliths ' are clearly proved to be due to natural causes, 

 not only by then' range throughout the gravels from the Eocene 

 downwards, but by careful observations made in France and in 

 Britain. 



In the Palaeolithic enquiry too much stress lias been laid on 

 the various levels of the gravel-terraces, and Man lias been treated 

 as if he were aquatic, and unable to wander down hill and up 

 dale. 



