44 
Capt. F. Petrie— Mr. Borlase will be called upon to speak on the other 
side ; but before the Chairman asks him to do so, I am anxious to say that 
we are in danger of going astray in the discussion, through a misconception 
with regard to the flint-flakes brought here by Mr. Evans, and which 
Dr. Carpenter asserts, in the name of common sense, to be artificial. 
Mr. Michell fully grants that they are, so will every one present ; but he 
holds that there is a great difference between them and the naturally-chipped 
flints of the Drift, in other words, he holds that there is a great difference be- 
tween the flakes which are arranged on each side of the chairman ; the one 
set he holds as being naturally, the other artificially, chipped. 
Mr. William C. Borlase— I will confine my remarks to the smaller 
flint-flakes which are scattered broadcast over the surface of Cornwall. 
These, as a geologist, I have always considered as nothing more nor less than 
the insoluble residue of the soluble chalk. They are “ leavings , not 
“bringings.” In this opinion I have been confirmed by some recent 
remarks of Mr. Etheridge, who speaks of the cretaceous beds extending, in 
his belief, at one time over the whole of the west of England. “ In Devon- 
shire,” he says, “we find piles of flint upon the upper greensand, the chalk 
being gone.” In Cornwall, we find these flints broken— broken I cannot say 
how, but with the bulb of percussion sometimes shown upon them — along 
with pebbles of this very same upper greensand. There is one remarkable 
thing about them, and that is, that if any of you were to go to different parts 
of Cornwall, and put the flints you gathered there into three or four different 
piles, I could tell you the district from which each of them came, owing to 
the manner in which the colouring of the different beds has apparently 
affected them. I have found these flints in their simplest forms as flakes, 
not only on the surface, but in the barrows and urns of the dead, mixed up 
with the ashes of the funeral pyre, and in these cases sometimes they are 
artificially chipped ; but as a rule they are simple flakes, such as I see before 
me. Some of the flakes have been burnt with the ashes, and in these 
cases they may hate been what Mr. Evans declares some of them 
to be — the “ strike-a-lights ” for the funeral pyre. But all we can gather 
from this is that man knew the whereabouts of these several deposits, and 
recognized their utility for the several purposes in which he could employ 
them, sometimes as a simple arrow-head, and sometimes as the means of 
striking a light for his fire. When he found that they Were not quite 
suitable in shape, he may have chipped them a little, and thus it may be 
that we often find chipped ones along with the others. We find arrow-heads 
as good as those of Scotland, side by side with these simple little flakes ; but 
surely nature may sometimes be allowed to have rivalled the ingenuity of 
man, and to have imitated his handiwork so far as to form a simple flake, 
What others nature has left, man has wrought out more completely for his 
Use, 
Professor Tennant.— I have very little to say upon this subject, except 
with reference to a statement that has been made as to the variety of 
materials of which implements are composed. This is due in reality 
