218 
illustrated in South Devon. In Kent's Cavern the flaked flints 
are numbered by hundreds, in Brixham Cavern by tens; and at 
Oreston, near Plymouth, where no flint drift has been found, 
no flakes have been obtained from the caverns. In Belgium, 
from one small cavern, thirty thousand such “ implements 
have been collected. What would be thought of the sanity of 
a man who, with a dining-room capable of seating only thirty 
guests, had provided a supply of thirty thousand knives. 
The exploration of Brixham Cavern was commenced m loo 8, 
and completed within one year, and shortly after the conclu- 
siveness of the evidence proving the high antiquity of man, was 
affirmed and vouched for by names in the front rank of science; 
but the issue of the final report was unaccountably delayed tor 
fifteen years, and during this period outsiders had. no oppor- 
tunity of testing for themselves the force of the evidence, and 
when an abstract of it appeared in the Proceedings of the Boyai 
Society in 1872, it but feebly supported the strong statements 
which had been so early put forward, and which was founded 
solely on the “Fifteen Knives;" but in the final report these 
are only mentioned as the “ so-called knives, and are in- 
cluded under the subdued terms of “flakes and splinters of 
“ The Philosophical Transactions of the Boyal Society" for the 
year 1873 contain the full report of the committee, and we 
here find the thirty-six specimens of flints classed and described 
in detail. They are thus classed by the reporter, Mr. Prest- 
wich ■ “ Fifteen of which show unmistakable evidence of 
having been artificially worked.” . . . “ There are nine others 
of which the workmanship is very rude or doubtful, while 
there are seven which I think show no traces of having been 
worked at all. In the long interval since their discovery four 
specimens have been mislaid."* Nos. 6 and 8 are said to form 
one specimen, thus making up the full number of thirty-six. 
We may infer from this description that there is an evident 
passage in these roughly fractured flints, from that which is 
assumed to be a perfect implement into the flint broken by 
natural causes, and even the practised eye of the most accom- 
plished geologist of the age fails to determine the difference 
between the flint said to be chipped by man, and the flint 
naturally broken. 
A special examination of the flints by Mr. Evans is embodied 
in the Keport. He says “ Of the fragments of flint of various 
* Trans, of Royal Society , vol. 163, p. 561. 
f Ibid., p. 549. 
