NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. 
295 
South Wales to the south, and the Carboniferous strata of Devon 
towards the north, that it was probable the latter was at one 
time joined to the former, the Bristol Channel occupying the 
synclinal trough. The separation of all or most of these coal- 
fields must have occurred prior to the deposition of the newer 
strata, which, from the deep borings through the Wealden and Chalk, 
are found to rest unconformably upon strata older than the Car- 
boniferous ; so that if the latter had existed, they must have been 
denuded prior to the deposition of these newer strata. 
THE STONE IMPLEMENTS. 
ABSTRACT OF LECTURE BY MR. F. BRENT. 
(Read March 25th, 1880.) 
The Lecturer, after pointing out that the study of the stone imple- 
ments in relation to pre-historic races of man had received very 
little attention until within the last half century, gave some 
recorded instances of the discovery of polished celts in Cornwall, 
&c, in the eighteenth century, and of Palaeolithic implements in 
the gravels of London as early as 1713. It was not, however, 
until the discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes at Abbeville, and 
of Dr. Eigollet at Amiens, of worked flints in Drift enclosing the 
remains of extinct animals, had been made known, that any syste- 
matic classification or arrangement of stone implements had been 
made ; but from that time there had been most rapid progress, and 
through the researches of Dr. John Evans, Sir J ohn Lubbock, and 
other archaeologists in this country, as well as abroad, the whole 
subject of the weapons and implements of the people of the Stone 
Age had been so thoroughly investigated as to leave no doubt upon 
the minds of the unbiassed that man must not only have existed 
prior to the deposition of the Quaternary gravels, but must have 
seen the mammoth and rhinoceros when they roamed at will in the 
South of England; the cave lion and the cave bear, when they 
