286 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



Quite right, M. Grras ; some do look as if they had just come from 

 the hands of the workmen. Assuredly they do — and very naturally 

 too, seeino- they have in reality just come from the hands of the 

 workmen. We have seen abundance of forgeries, both from the val- 

 ley of the Somme and from Yorkshire. There are indeed plenty of 

 forgeries. Nevertheless there are some rmZ; these however are com- 

 paratively few. jSTo one ought to mistake the real geological flint- 

 implements from the forgeries. No one who is used to break flints 

 but ought to tell readily whether a flint was broken with an iron in- 

 strument or not. A modern hammer will not crack or flake a flint 

 in the same way that a stone will. Try it, reader, and see for your- 

 self, 



Setting aside forgeries, there is even then no reason why the flint- 

 implements should not be in good preservation. If first frozen into a 

 mass of ice, then transported enveloped in, and protected by that 

 ice-casing, then dropped on the floor of the wide-spread river-flood 

 by the melting of the ice, then covered over percliance by the soft 

 materials of the summer stream, or left on the verdant marshy tract 

 during the interval between the periodical floods, what was there to 

 weather or otherwise injure so hard a substance as flint ? Nothing 

 that we know of. Moreover, the truth is, that as far as our experi- 

 ence goes — and we have seen more than a few of the fossil flint-im- 

 plements — they are by no means all always so wonderfully perfect. 

 Some are decidedly worn — even as much so as the gravel in which 

 they are found. 



2. The astonishing muliitude of these axes. — Surely, no one thinks 

 one man made the lot, or that they were all made at once. G eologists 

 always cry out for " plenty of time." They ask for plenty of time — a 

 whole geological age — for the formation of the gravel deposits. So 

 tiierefore the primitive men bad a whole age to chip flints in. The 

 very quantity of elephant and other bones found in the gravel-beds 

 shows nature did take an age to form them, unless we suppose a super- 

 natural increase and growth of living beasts, followed by an equally su- 

 pernatural and wholesale destruction. But in reality, how common 

 are the true worked flints ? AVe have seen one only from all the great 

 gravel-beds round and under Loudon, aud miles of them have lately 

 been cut through for the sewer- works. We have seen, may be, half a 

 dozen from Suflblk, a like number from Bedford, two or three from 

 Kent, and less than a dozen more from all parts of England. As to the 

 Yorkshire specimens, we must know more about them, and ivhere they 



