256 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



ments that represent the highest intelligence of primitive man in 

 tool-making, while at my very elbow great 40 ft. steel borers 

 were thumping their way for a thousand feet or more down 

 through the ground to reach the oil-sands, and all around beam- 

 engines were pumping the oil up to the surface. It is seldom, I 

 think, that such striking representatives of ancient and modern 

 industry can be seen at the same spot ! 



Mr. Oldham, of the Geological Survey of India, was with 

 Dr. Noetling when they found some chips ; he has seen what I 

 have collected, and has also been to Yenangyoung again, and 

 picked up some more for himself, and there can be no doubt 

 whatever that the pieces found originally by Dr. Noetling are 

 identical with those that are found scattered about everywhere. 

 As the plateau gravel, which is the source of the chert, rests un- 

 conformably on the Tertiary beds, the chips, apart from their 

 position on the surface, can have no connection with the Miocene 

 or Pliocene beds. 



Dr. Noetling, although he was engaged for several months in 

 making a detailed geological map of the oil-fields, and examined 

 the plateau gravel, does not appear to have noticed either the 

 fact that chips, identical with those mentioned by him, are scat- 

 tered about everywhere in no inconsiderable numbers, or that 

 the plateau gravel contains lumps of chert, besides quartz. 



Not having myself had the opportunity at that time of 

 examining any similar objects from India or elsewhere, I sub- 

 mitted several of them to Mr. Bruce Foote at Yercand, in 

 Madras, and that gentleman had no difficulty in finding a 

 similarity between them and objects of typical Neolithic age 

 from sites in Bellary, Kurnoot, Gujerat, and Kathiawar. He 

 judges them to be of late Neolithic or even early Iron age, but 

 distinctly not Palaeolithic. Three or four specimens are well- 

 worked scrapers, of small size as compared with European speci- 

 mens, but good examples of their kind, with regular " gasteropod " 

 working faces and secondary chipping along the edge ; others 

 are apparently scrapers of a larger and rougher kind, while 

 specimens of peeling-stones and so-called sling-stones are to be 

 found. Without, however, straining after resemblances, and 

 striving to find uses for what may in some instances be merely 

 accidental fragments, it is certain that among the chips are 



