40 
In former papers, read before tbis Sociefc}^, I have pointed 
out that the true flint implements of the Neolithic age show 
the same kind of evidence of wear, by use, as that of a well- 
worn chisel or a wasted ploughshare ; and that, though I have 
inspected at least a thousand drift implements of the 
Palgeolithic age, in England and France, I have not seen one 
bearing the same auth-entic evidence of use as is impressed 
on the true stone tools of the Neolithic age ; and later dis- 
coveries, as well as this at Broom, confirm the opinion that 
such evidence does not exist. 
But further, the skill of all savage tribes hitherto discovered 
is wonderfully exhibited in the design and carving of their 
implements of war and the chase. This is well exemplified 
in the various tools and relics of man obtained from the lake 
dwellings of Switzerland, and our museums are crowded 
with overwhelming evidence on this point. But tliese frac- 
tured pieces of chert from Broom show no indication of any 
manipulative skill, or bear the impress of any intellectual 
thought. 
The chert gravel beds, at the foot of these greensand hills, 
extend, throughout all their windings, over a distance of at 
least two hundred miles ; the gravel is of the same nature 
and fracture everywhere in the district ; the geological causes 
which operated on it must have been everywliere the same, 
and we may therefore expect to find similar results in the 
fractured forms of the gravel ; especially as during the erec- 
tion of the telegraph-posts between Chard and Axminster 
similar drift implements have been discovered, four of 
which are now in the Blackmore Museum. The drift tools 
at Broom have been found after the rate of 2,000 to a mile, 
which for a distance of 200 miles gives an estimated quantity 
of 400,000 tools for the gravel beds at the foot of the hills 
only. 
From the gravel beds of the valley of the Somme thousands 
of these drift tools have been exhumed. The valleys of 
Norfolk and Suffolk are loaded with gravel beds, in which 
these drift implements are so abundant that hundreds have 
been dug out of a single pit. And over a period of at least 
twenty years, numerous antiquaries have collected untold 
numbers of these splintered flints; and at the present time, 
notwithstanding all the abundance of the discoveries, and the 
labours of extended research, not a single bone of raan^s 
frame has been found in the drift gravel, or any other 
authentic relic indicative of his presence, to confirm the bald 
supposition that these flints are human implements. 
Further : much of the evidence which had been prominently 
