28 
evidence of their human manufacture was doubtful. Sir John Lubbock , 
however, who appears to have especially visited Egypt for the purpose of 
inspecting these so-called implements, comes to tne conclusion that they 
have been artificially formed, and in this opinion he is supported by 1 
de Mortillet and M. Broca. Again, on the sterile ground between Cairo 
and the Red Sea they occur in great numbers ; and they also abound in 
the wadies of the Sinaitic Peninsula. Mr. J. Milne found angular an 
apparently freshly-broken fragments of flints, which he consideis to 
been broken by variation of temperature, strewn over the desert of the 
Till, and thence over the high ground of Syria to Lebanon shattered flints 
may be found on the surface ; and again, over the great and terrible 
desert between Syria and the Euphrates, the flints are so numerous on the 
surface as to have given it the name of the Desert of Flints. A knowledge 
of these facts, and a careful investigation of the sites of the so-called Palaeo- 
lithic manufactories, within my reach during the past twelve years, have 
so impressed my mind with the certainty of the natural production of these 
imaginary flint implements, that I should be untrue to my convictions if 
I did not firmly hold this opinion ; and unfaithful to myself if I did not 
express it through evil or good report. My views on this question ha\ e 
lately been strengthened by the opinion, now generally held by the 
American antiquaries, that they fail to find any line of demarcation 
between the implements of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages ; and such 
appears also to be the opinion of Mr. William Gray, from an extensive 
examination of the shattered flints in the north of Ireland. The infeiencc 
being, that there is, in fact, no Palaeolithic age. 
The meeting was then adjourned. 
Note.— Mr. Whitley could scarce desire a better justification for some 
of the statements in his paper than is afforded by the following .— A 
Conference on the question of the Antiquity of Man was held on IV ay 
22, 1877. The President, Mr. J. Evans, F.R.S. (President of the Geolo- 
gical Society), in opening the conference, alluded to the altere d position lot 
the question since it was first brought before the British public m 18oJ, 
and pointed out the extreme caution which was necessary in dealing 
with the subject, as it lay within the domain of the archaeologist, the 
anthropologist, and the geologist ; neither of whom was sufficient, alone 
by himself, to offer a very strong opinion on the subject. Great care was 
also necessary with regard to the facts of the discoveries themselves, as 
the objects discovered were liable to get mixed with other objects below 
them ; and this was important in the case of cave-deposits, in which there 
might be interments of a later date than the human skeletons deposited 
in the caves. The question was now very much within the the province 
of the geologist, whose business it was to determine the antiquity of the 
deposits in which the discoveries may have been made. After alluding 
to several recent discoveries in Fiance, Spain, and Switzerland, the 
President remarked that each successive discovery, or presumed discovery, 
must bereceived in a cautious but candid spirit ; and, looking to the many 
sources of doubt and error which attached to isolated discoveries, their 
watchword must for the present be ‘ caution, caution, caution’. — - Nature . 
