358 
44 a. Natural or partly dressed. 
44 b. Natural or partly dressed. 
45. Appears dressed.” 
Specimen No. 10 probably approached the nearest to the Somme type, but 
even this flint is described as “natural, but perhaps chipped at the edge.”* 
These flints were collected and described by a first-class “ expert,” having 
the “ experienced eye,” which Lyell says is necessary to distinguish the false 
from the true implement; and yet in this case the present Woodwardian 
Professor of Geology at Cambridge could not distinguish from his point of 
view the work of man from that of nature, the gradation of form and fracture 
being so imperceptible. 
2nd. I have inspected most of the gravel-beds whence these “imple- 
ments ” have been obtained, both iu England and on the Continent, and also 
the accessible museums in which they have been placed ; and I have never 
found one single “ Drift implement ” showing the same indubitable evidence of 
use by man , as is stamped on the true stone tools of the Neolithic age. 
Even the degraded Bushman of South Africa, who has no house or home, 
no animals but a few wretched half-wild dogs, and no clothing but rough 
skins, makes a stone implement, with a hole in it for a handle, to dig out 
roots from the soil. And these undoubted implements are now found over a 
large area, conclusively indicating a former extension of the Bushmen who 
used them over that which they now occupy, f 
Wherever man, even the most degraded savage, has been, he has left multi- 
form and indubitable relics of his presence, but the supposed Palaeolithic man 
of the Drift gravel-beds has left no evidence of his former existence but 
rough stone implements, and these unlike any genuine implements known to 
have been used by man, and so uncouth in form that it is doubtful to what 
use they could have been applied ; aud with these, says Sir Charles Lyell, are 
a vast variety of very rude implements, some of which can only be recognised 
by an experienced eye as bearing marks of human workmanship ( Antiq . of 
Man, p. 118, 1st ed.) ; and we now further find others which so blend with 
the natural forms of the angular flint gravel, that the most accomplished 
expert cannot determine the difference between the work of nature and the 
work of man. 
Considering judicially the weight which should be attached to the whole of 
the evidence for and against the “ implement ” theory of these flints, from 
the ancient valley gravels, it appears to me more reasonable to reject the 
supposed existence of the so-called Palaeolithic man, — than to believe that 
these fractured flints arc of human workmanship. 
* “On Flint Implements.” By T. McK. Hughes, M.A, The “Geological 
Ittpertory.” Proc. Soc. Ant. Loud. 
Africa. B.v Keith Johnston. P.441. 
