SMITH — FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN THE " OYLE " CAYE, TENBY. 47 
lery of the mound-building Natchez in their less weight and their 
more acuminated form. A sketch from Squier's ' JMonuments of the 
Mississippi A'^alley ' indicates the size of the celts of the short-headed 
niouud-huilders. It ^^■as 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.* AYhether 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 humai\ race in America, inferred from 
the existence of so many native traditions of the rapjports 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. Such proof can alone conclusively demon- 
strate the true affinities of nations, or the probable era when they 
existed- IMere archaeological 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 Chiriqui becomes fraught with considerations 
of the highest mental value. 
REPORT OF A SUCCESSFUL SEARCH EOR ELINT- 
IMPLEMENTS IN A CAVE CALLED '^^HE OYLE," 
NEAR TENBY, SOUTH WALES, IN JUNE AND JULY, 
1862, 
By Gilbert N. Smith, Rector of Gumfreston. 
{Read at the 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 Celtiqnes et Aniediluviennes, 8vo, ii. 232) de- 
scribes a series of analogous half-polished hatchets, as appertaining to the '* transition " 
