SMITII — ELINT IMPLEMENTS ITT TTEE " OYLE " CAVE, TENET. 47 



lery of the mound-building Natchez in their less weight and their 

 more acuminated form. A sketch from Squier's ' Monuments of the 

 Mississippi Valley ' indicates the size of the celts of the short-headed 

 mound-builders. It was six by four inches, and weighed about two 

 pounds. It is undoubtedly a finished celt. Upon a comparison of 

 the Chiriqui celts with the obsidian knives from Mexico, no resem- 

 blance exists. Their closest analogy is with the hatchets from the 

 stone mounds of Denmark. Dr. Troyon has observed that " man, 

 placed under analogous circumstances, acts in an analogous manner, 

 irrespective of time or place." We thus have analogous flints from 

 wholly distinct parts of the world.* Whether these evidences indicate 

 the once almost universal dispersion, antecedent to the historical 

 epoch of whole nations of men, little elevated above the animals, 

 whose remains have been preserved to us in strata often containing 

 the debris of extinct mammalia, I must leave to this Society to deter- 

 mine. The antiquity of the human race in America, inferred from 

 the existence of so many native traditions of the rapports which early 

 man once bore to the extinct animals, is thus rendered more probable 

 by the antiquarian evidences now afforded us. 



I cannot close this paper without expressing my sincere regret that 

 no osseous or cranial remains have been afforded us of the aborigines 

 of Chiriqui and Panama. Sueh proof can alone conclusively demon- 

 strate the true affinities of nations, or the probable era when they 

 existed. Mere archseological evidence is an uncertain guide. 



In conclusion, I beg to remark, that at first sight the mere degree 

 of chipping which a flint might have undergone at human hands might 

 seem a trivial subject of discourse ; but when we reflect upon the 

 aphorism of Sir Thomas Browne, that "Time conferreth a dignity 

 upon the most trifling thing that resisteth his power," the study of 

 these carved stones from Chmqui becomes fraught with considerations 

 of the highest mental value. 



REPORT OF A SUCCESSFUL SEARCH FOR FLINT- 

 IMPLEMENTS IN A CAVE CALLED " THE OYLE," 

 NEAR TENBY, SOUTH WALES, IN JUNE AND JULY, 

 18G2. 



By Gilbert N. Smith, Rector oe Gumereston. 



{Read at tlie Cambridge Meeting of the British Association, 1862.) 



This is a cave in the Mountain Limestone, with a wide entrance 

 looking to the north-east at about 70 feet above the level of the 

 valley beneath, up which the tide has recently flowed. The cave 

 extends tortuously for 30 or 40 yards into the axis of a ridge which 

 is a spur of the "Ridgeway," extending from Pembroke to Tenby, 

 composed of the Old Red, the strike of which is east and west. 



* Boucher de Perthes [Antiquites Celtiques et Ani4diluvienn.es, Svo, ii. 232) de- 

 scribes a series of analogous half- polished hatchets, as appertaining to the "transition" 



