APPEXDIX. 369 



ing the " bulb of percussion," always seen upon them, have 

 been discovered in the Tertiary deposits at Thenay,* al- 

 though I have found them there myself upon the surface. 

 The three other figures would be classed by archaeologists as 

 "piercers," as Bourgeois has himself designated them, and 

 are also solid objects. Many of the Thenay flints exhibit a 

 " crackled " appearance, due to the action of heat. On 

 this account Mortillet maintains that they were splintered 

 by fire, and not formed by percussion, the usual method by 

 which flint implements were fabricated in the stone age. 

 The Thenay objects are all of very small dimensions, and 

 are so absolutely unlike the large, rudely-chipped axes of 

 the Chellean type, found in so many different parts of the 

 world, and generally accepted as the implement used by 

 Palaeolithic man, that the question naturally suggests itself, 

 What could have been the purpose for which these little 

 implements were employed ? No better answer has been 

 suggested than the ludicrous one that they were used by the 

 hairy anthropopithecus to rid himself of the vermin with 

 which he was infested. 



But, leaving aside the question of their purpose, let us 

 consider the evidence presented by the flints themselves. 

 Do they exhibit the unmistakable traces of intentional chip- 

 ping produced by a series of slight blows or thrusts, deliv- 

 ered in regular succession and in the same direction, with 

 the result of forming a distinctly marked edge ? And does 

 the appearance of the action of fire upon their surface imply 

 the intervention of intelligence ? To both questions M. 

 Adrien Arcelin, the well-known geologist of Macon, has 

 given very sufficient replies in the negative. He has discov- 

 ered numerous objects of precisely similar appearance in 

 Eocene deposits in the neighborhood of Macon. f But, in- 

 stead of pushing man back on this account so much further 

 into the past, he accounts for the marks of chipping to 

 be seen on many of these objects as the result of the acciden- 

 tal shocks of one stone against another in the countless 



* Le Prehistorique, p. 91. 



f Materiaux pour l'Histoire Prim, et Xat. de l'Homrae, tome xix, 

 p. 193. 



