ANTHROPOLOGY. 1 



Discoveries at Caddington, England, by Mr. Worthing- 

 ton G. Smith.— M. Renach informed the writer at the St. Germain 

 Museum, in 1893, that a hermit was needed in France to live in the 

 Drift Gravel Quarries and pounce upon chipped blades as they were 

 brought to light in the excavations. This was to illuatrate the fact 

 that about four-fifths of the alleged paleolithic implements on exhi- 

 bition in France were either found on the surface and not in place in 

 the gravels, or bought by collectors, professors of geology and curators 

 of museums, as I bought mine from workmen at the gravel pits. 



Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence of a Plistocene blade 

 chipper in western Europe to satisfy the American critic who will take 

 nothing on faith, and the best of this in recent years is embodied in the 

 work of Mr. F. G. Spurrell, who found a stone blade workshop of 

 Plistocene age under drift gravel at Crayford, England, and in the 

 indefatigable explorations of Mr. W. G. Smith at North London (Stoke 

 Newington) and at Caddington, Bedfordshire. 



" Man, the Primeval Savage," by Worthington G. Smith, London 

 (Edward Stanford, 27 Cockspur St.", Charing Cross, 1894), tells of the 

 striking discoveries made by the latter in some brick-kiln pits on a hill 

 top near Caddington. These cuttings through the drift, discovered by 

 tracing up relic bearing road ballast t<> its source, and watched for six 

 years, during which time they were often filled with water or aban- 

 doned by workmen at critical moments, revealed what Mr. Smith calls 

 a Paleolithic floor or older surface on which rested a stone blade work- 

 shop of Plistocene Age. This was covered by a mantle fiveto ten feet 

 thick, of contorted drift, unfortunately containing no animal remains, 

 that here overspreads the hill, and developed upon examination the 

 following interesting and novel facts ' 



1. The blade factory was undisturbed, thus presenting an MSOciaUon 

 of artifical obje< ts full ..f rigniticance and duplicating the results of Mr. 

 Spurrell at Crayford. Other discoverers had found scattered and 

 isolated specimens in the gravel, here the raw material, the blades more 

 or less finished, the chips and the tools lay just as the Post-Glacial 

 workmen had left them. 



2. To the envy of the ordinary searcher for isolated objects in the 

 drift, this range "of specimens from one place included scrapers worked 



»The department is edited by Henry C. Mercer, University of Penna , Phila. 



