223 



and the recent surfaces more marked. The polish is apparently one that 

 is only to be acquired by long weathering, possibly by the slow perco- 

 lation of water or other similar action ; and though it might no doubt 

 be artificially imitated, yet it could hardly be done except by labour and 

 expense which would raise the cost much beyond the few sous which the 

 children ask for the most common kind of worked flints. 



I only gave two francs even for the peculiar adze-like flint. One of 

 the workmen produced this for me from a shelf in his cabin, and he 

 would doubtless have taken less had I chosen to beat him down. This 

 possesses the peculiar sheen or polish which attests it genuineness. 



I have deposited this collection of flint implements in the Paleeon- 

 tological Gallery of the Museum of Irish Industry, among the fossils 

 collected by the officers of the Geological Survey of the United King- 

 dom, near the skeleton of the Irish Eig Horn (commonly called the Irish 

 Elk), and some other bones of that animal, presented to us by Lady Eliza- 

 beth Butler, and also near the few specimens of bones and teeth of the 

 mammoth and other Pleistocene animals which we possess. 



I would beg leave to take this opportunity of indorsing Mr. Prest- 

 wich's explanation of the mode of occurrence of these fluiviatile deposits. 

 He concludes that they were formed by the currents and floods of the 

 rivers when they ran at different levels during the latter part of the 

 process of the excavation of the valleys. The land, he says, may have 

 stood at a lower level at one time, and he gives some independent evidence 

 for that, and the rivers may accordingly have had different rates of ve- 

 locity during its elevation. All this must have required a great length 

 of time, during part of which geologists know, from other evidence, that 

 the climate of Prance and England was more like that of ISTorth Siberia 

 and I^orth Labrador than it is now ; and there was also perhaps a greater 

 fall of rain and snow, and, consequently, greater occasional floods than 

 at present. 



The old savage tribes of men at this period probably li^ed very much 

 as do the people of the countries alluded to above at the present day, 

 and during the winter they would in like manner make holes in the 

 ice of the river, and watch them, in order to spear the fish and other 

 aquatic animals that would come to them. This would account for the 

 num))er of implements found at particular spots, near the village of a 

 tribe perhaps, o]; where the aquatic animals were most abundant ; while 

 the men being fewer, and more wary than the herds of land animals 

 (mammoths and others) which they pursued, would be a sufficient reason 

 why the bone or tooth of a man should be of even still rarer occurrence 

 than the bones of the other animals. 



W. H. Hardinge, Esq., concluded the reading of his paper on the 

 Mapped Townland Surveys of Ireland. 



