NOTES AND QUERTES. 
119 
the shingle. It differs from those presented by Mr. Leech to the Jermyn 
Street Museum, which are from the same locality, in being smaller, much 
less pointed, and flatter at the base. Its length must have been 5 inches, 
and its greatest breadth 3f inches, exactly corresponding to the oval shape 
and size of the Amiens flint presented by Mr. Prestwich to the same mu- 
seum. The edges are much fractured, either from use or water-rolling, 
probably both. Geo. J. Strong. 
Queen^s Printing Office. 
Phosphoeus in Nature. — This element is found in minute quantities 
almost everywhere in nature ; it is an essential constituent of fertile soils, 
and of all living organisms. But people have been rather puzzled to ac- 
count for the mountains of apatite (crystalline phosphate of lime) which 
have already been found in one or two parts of Europe, and which may 
exist in other quarters of the globe. We quote the explanation in Dr. 
Hofmann's Eeport of the Chemical Products and Processes in Section A 
of the International Exhibition : — " Large masses of phosphorus are, in the 
course of geological revolutions extending over vast periods of time, re- 
stored from the organic reigns of nature to the mineral kingdom by the 
slow process of fossilization, whereby vegetal tissues are gradually trans- 
formed into peat, lignite, and coal ; and animal tissues are petrified 
into coprolites, which, in course of time, yield crystalline apatite." And 
then : — "After lying locked up and motionless in these forms for indefi- 
nite periods, phosphorus, by further geological movements, becomes again 
exposed to its natural solvents, water and carbonic acid, and is thus re- 
stored to active service in the organisms of plants and the lower animals, 
through which it passes, to complete the mighty cycle of its movements, 
into the blood and tissue of the human frame. While circulating thus, 
age after age, through the three kingdoms of nature, phosphorus is never 
for a moment free. It is throughout retained in combination with oxygen 
and with the earthy or alkaline metals, for which its attraction is intense." 
Traditions of the Deluge and of the Unity of Origin of Man. 
— The subject of traditions was brought under discussion at a late meeting 
of the Ethnological Society, by a paper by the Eev. Mr. Farrar, who in 
general terms objected to the race-values, as well as the antiquity of tradi- 
tions. One point is, however, in a geological aspect, I think, worthy of ex- 
amination. I am under the impression that the tradition of a universal 
deluge, and of the descent of mankind from a single pair, is characteristic 
of the Caucasian races. Now the glacial era was seemingly inaugurated 
with unequalled copious rains, and passed away as a geological age m a 
multitude of debacles, seemingly from the melting of the vast quantities of 
snow and ice accumulated during that intensely cold period. The relics o| 
man are found fossil in the deposits of at least the close of this period, and 
therefore primitive man would have been at least an eye-witness of the 
later debacles, if not of the inaugurating rains. To get out of the Gorilla- 
origin theory for a time, and to look justly at facts, we find the oldest fossil 
human skull— the Engis— belonging to the Caucasian or European type. 
If, then, the Caucasian peoples should be proved to be the only original 
preservers of the tradition of the deluge and single-pair parents of the 
human race, would it not be very confirmatory presumption in layour 
of the greater antiquity of European man, than of men of other species i' 
We have nowhere got a fossil negro, and negroes have no traditions ot 
these two popularly-believed events. If European man s antiquity ex- 
tended to the debacles which closed the glacial age, there would be an on- 
