part 3] A XATUKAL ' EOLITH ' FACTORY. 249 



Discussion. 



Mr. H. Dewey, after congratulating the Author on the work 

 that he had completed, remarked that, if the Author's conclusions 

 were correct, they cut deeply at the roots of much modern specu- 

 lation as to the antiquity of Man. If natural agencies are operative 

 in the production of form and fracture of flints hitherto supposed 

 to be characteristic of human work, it behoves prehistorians to 

 review their theories, and to establish such criteria of human 

 workmanship as are irrefutable. • 



The speaker asked for evidence that the Author's specimens had 

 occurred undisturbed in the Bullhead Bed, and remarked on a 

 difficulty which, he felt, needed explanation. It is a fact that 

 sub-Tertiary solution is a phenomenon of widespread occurrence 

 and, as shown by the Author, one capable of producing flints 

 resembling Eoliths and rostro-carinate forms, yet over the part of 

 the Chalk plateau between the valley of the Mole and that of the 

 Med way, where true Eoliths find their home, the speaker had never 

 found a form referable to the rostro-carinate type, nor had he ever 

 seen an Eolith that had been made from a green-coated flint. The 

 fact that the rostro-carinates of Suffolk had hitherto been found 

 lying only upon Tertiary beds, and not upon the Chalk beneath, 

 also militated against the origin postulated by the Author. 



The speaker further remarked upon the ambiguous position of 

 implements of Le Moustier type ; recent researches have led to 

 the claim that they belong to the Preglacial, the Palaeolithic, 

 and the Neolithic periods, and now natural agencies are claimed as 

 capable of producing them. Their value, therefore, as ' zonal 

 fossils ', to the stratigrapher was nil. 



Mr. Reginald Smith pleaded for a stricter definition of 

 ' Eolith,' and would prefer to see the term applied only to the 

 ochreous specimens with steep edge-chipping found principally on 

 the North Downs, and so named in 1892. In a paper on a 

 parallel deposit at Belle-Assise (Oise), published in ' L' Anthro- 

 pologic' for 1910, the Abbe Breuil had spoken of Eolithic work on 

 crushed flints from a horizon corresponding to the Bullhead Bed ; 

 but the specimens figured were not of the North Downs type. 

 It was unfair to judge of Eoliths by the half-dozen exhibited ; 

 but even those seemed to differ from the Eocene specimens. The 

 most convincing Eolith that he had seen was in the Stopes Col- 

 lection, in the National Museum of Wales, and poor specimens 

 only confused the issue. The large flake with prominent bulb 

 was certainly suggestive of" Le Moustier, but Nature might easily 

 produce one good flake in a million. There were certain features 

 due to percussion that helped to distinguish human work from the 

 results of natural pressure ; and careful comparison with a dozen 

 specimens from Le Moustier would show that the scraping edges 

 on exhibition were cpiite distinct from those of the Cave period. 

 Doubtless continual reminders of Nature's capabilities were neces- 

 sary, but the result was in some cases to destroy all confidence, 



