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not Palaeolithic man. Palaeolithic man, if such a being ever 
existed, was a low savage, incapable of anything higher than 
simply chipping a flint for his weapon ; when he reached the 
capacity of smoothing that weapon we had then arrived at the 
Neolithic age. Mr. Sydney Skertchlev, F.Gr.S., who is now 
writing upon the subject of “The Antiquity of Man,” says of 
the Palaeoliths that they “ were more degraded than any known 
savage tribe.”* * * § But these men of Creswell Caves were workers 
in bone, artificers who used awls and gouges. They knew the 
use of the needle, and also wrought in iron,f for they left behind 
them one oval ironstone implement, and two more leaf-shaped, 
all worked to approved forms.J There were also artists amongst 
them, for one of them had left his artistic product in the cavern, 
and Professor Boyd Dawkins, as an art critic, describes the work 
as follows: — “The most important discovery of the handiwork 
of man is the head and fore-quarters of a horse incised on a 
smoothed and rounded fragment of a rib, cut short off at one 
end, and broken at the other. On the flat side the head is 
represented with the nostrils, and mouth, and neck carefully 
drawn. A series of fine oblique lines show that the animal was 
hog-maned. Indeed, the whole is very well done, and is evidently 
a sketch from the life.”§ 
Is this, Mr. President, the kind of product that you would 
expect from a Palaeolithic savage ? 
Observe the artist’s care in preparing his tablet. The bone 
is first “ smoothed and rounded.” It is “ cut short off at one 
end.” I particularly noticed in the bone the clean cut, and will 
ask the members of this Institute, could you cut a hone clean 
through with a Palaeolithic implement ? It looks much more 
like having been done with a saw. I don’t say a metal saw — 
saws have been made of flint ; but there has been no proof of 
saws in Palaeolithic times ; and, then, observe that “ the engrav- 
ing is evidently a sketch from the life,” and that the living 
model was a hog-maned horse. 
Horses are not hog-maned in a state of nature, hog-manes 
are cut manes. The artist, then, that drew this horse lived at a 
time when horses’ manes were cut to fashion ; but Palaeolithic 
times were by no means fashionable times either for men or 
horses. 
It is also evident that you could not cut horses’ manes with 
* English Mechanic and World of Science, March 28, 1879, p. 49. 
t I accept the correction of the lfev. J. Mello made at the meeting. I 
ought to have said wrought on ironstone, instead of wrought in iron. 
J Journal of the Anthropological Institute, November, 1877, p. 153. 
Quarterly Journal Geological Society, 1877, pp. 582, 586. 
§ Quarterly Journal Geological Society, 1877, p. 592. 
