xxvi Journal of Proceedings.
as a "bulb of percussion," and illustrated his remarks by specimens
taken from those sent by Mr. Worthington Smith which had been found
in the area of the British Camp near Ightham, Sevenoaks, Kent.
Mr. Robarts, F.G.S., cautioned the members of the Society against
supposing that there was any very distinct line between the Palaeolithic
and the Neolithic Ages. The Palaeolithic implements, which were roughly
formed, were so far mixed with the Neolithic, for a reason which he would
give later on, that when they found Palaeolithic implements they must
not conclude—from that, at all events—that their age was very great.
Implements which were not polished, which were little more than flakes,
would naturally be made by hunters or by people who wanted implements
in a hurry. And often they might expect that, in the summer season,
when a hunter came across the then mainland—now the German Ocean—
into Great Britain, he would leave a small deposit of implements, which,
when found, might be considered Palaeolithic. And they must not con-
sider that Neolithic implements were all done with after bronze was
introduced. Bronze would have been an article of luxury and used by
the chiefs, whereas the rank and file would not have been able to use
bronze weapons, but must have been content with stone ones. In all
probability stone implements were used even long after the introduction
of iron. Then again we had almost contemporaneous evidence of the
manufacture of stone implements—at all events they were manufactured
in America as late as the middle of the 16th century. Flint implements
were then made by the Indians at Montreal, whereas a couple of hundred
years afterwards they were utterly unknown, and when dug up—had it
not been known by certain memoranda made by a voyager that there had
been that camp of Indians there—they might have been put down to a
period hundreds or even thousands of years previously. Another point
to be taken into consideration was this: it must not be taken that the
engravings on the bones were always engravings of contemporaneous
animals. There was considerable probability that they were of the
nature of totems which descended from father to son, as they did among
the American Indians; and there was a probability that, instead of these
figures being pictorial representations of animals living at the time—
although they would have been that in the first place—they were simply
the designs of chiefs, and might thus have kept to the Mammoth, though
the Mammoth had then no existence. He would add to the manufactories
the President had named one which he had not mentioned: the holes
known as Grimes's Graves, which were in all probability made to get into
good strata of flints—flints which would work easily. As supporting the
theory that flint implements were objects of barter, Mr. Robarts mentioned
that they were found in considerable numbers in places destitute of the
stone from which they were made ; and certain stones had been carried
all over Europe, and might be traced almost to one particular spot where
the factory was. As to the question of difficulty in distinguishing the
worked flints, he said that they might get doubtful flakes and be uncertain