along the edge. Dr. Campbell did not think that a man was likely to notch a sword of this sort--which was probably an heirloom in his family-for the temporary purpose of keeping a "tally." Among the people of the Himalaya mountains, with whom Dr. Campbell was familiar, the "tally" was in constant use in the occupations of ordinary life. A "sirdar" or head man of coolies kept a "tally" to enable him at the end of the day to give his master the number of men present; so in woodcutting, etc., a man will have a "tally" to show the number of logs delivered, etc., but it is not kept on a sword or other implement, but generally on a piece of stick cut in the jungle, and thrown away when the work is paid for. There are various ways of keeping a "tally"; a long notch may indicate 5, 10, or 20, so 5 notches, with a notch across, may stand for 10 or 20, as the case may be.

Mr. A. W. FRANKS stated that counterparts of the bones with singular markings described by Professor Rupert Jones, have been discovered in the cave explored by the Vicomte de Lastic near Bruniquel (Tarn et Garonne). Besides the harpoon heads with engraved lines and other ornaments, there have been found birds' bones with scored lines. One of these, now in the British Museum, is 51⁄2 inches long, and has on it repetitions of a number of lines occurring in sets similarly disposed, and which might well be a kind of numeration. There is also preserved in the British Museum an object of another kind, the use of which it would not be easy to discover had it not been accompanied by a description of its meaning. It is a wooden staff, 3 feet 4 inches in length, surmounted by a figure, and covered with designs of the usual New Zealand pattern. Down one side are eighteen projections, of which the fifteenth is inlaid with a piece of green jade. It was obtained in New Zealand by his Excellency Sir George Grey, who states it to record the history of the Ngati-Rangitiki tribe, and to have belonged to a chief named Te-korokai, who used it to aid his memory when recounting the history of the tribe.

Mr. M. J. C. BUCKLEY said tallies or scores for reckoning are still used in the south and south-west of Ireland. He has seen "tallies" employed for marking the number of loads of potatoes, hay, corn, barrels of beer, and "firkins "* of butter, in the counties of Cork, Waterford, Tipperary, and Carlow. The system of marking is by fives. When the scores are equal in playing ball, the local expression in Cork is "all aboard." The adage "it tallies with" something else, is from this fact of the scores on either side of the tally-stick or board being equal. The handles of spades and sticks in Cork and Waterford are often marked with notches as in the Australian club exhibited by Colonel Lane Fox. The expression, "I put my criss-cross on it," used by the peasantry, is from this custom, so that the owner being unable to read could always claim his own stick or spade by its marks.

* A "firkin" of butter is a small oak barrel of about 281bs. weight, in Cork. It is a corruption of the Flemish word "vierkin" (vier, four, and kin, little), or small quarter barrel. These firkins are all staved and hooped according to certain bye-laws of Cork and Limerick.

The manner of inserting the spade which is in use in the stony districts of the south-west of Ireland is precisely similar to the way in which the so-called bronze "celts" or hatchets of the ancient Irish were fastened to their handles. The name of "Wishmoor," near the site of the presumed lake station treated of by Lieutenant King, seems to come directly from the sound of the Keltic or Gaelic words "uischka mōre," or "large drinkable water." The river in Munster called in English the "Blackwater," is in Irish the "Abhainn-mohr (pronounced "Avonmore") or "great water." Here is the same name and the Keltic-sounding word of " Wishmore" near to it. The words "wish," 99 66 ‚” “ouish,” “ huish,” “ish,” ey," au," "eu,” mark a spot where water (“oua wa) is to be found, as in this place.

99.66

The following paper was read by the author:

DISCOVERY of a FLINT IMPLEMENT STATION in WISHMOOR BOTTOM, near SANDHURST. By Lieut. C. COOPER KING, Royal Marine Artillery. Plates xx and xxi.

THE neighbourhood of Sandhurst abounds in traces of early human occupation. The successive races that have, from time to time, inhabited this portion of Hampshire, Berkshire, and Surrey, lying between Guildford and Reading, have each and all left behind them more or less distinct evidences of their residence and existence.

At Aldershot and near Wishmoor large earthen entrenchments, the sites of stores, depôts, or camps, mark the halting places of the Roman legions, or the temporary fortifications whence they over-awed the land. Tumuli, which have been found to contain pottery and other Saxon or British remains, crown many of the isolated hills and spurs projecting from the narrow irregular ranges which intersect the district. Numerous instances again are on record of the discovery of single flakes or implements of flint, worked or bearing other marks of use, on the barren moorlands undisturbed by present cultivation; but except at and near Puttenham, a small village situated south of the chalk ridge of the " Hog's Back," there has not been any large "find" of these interesting relics of primæval races, and certainly no case in which there are such evident traces of actual work and perhaps residence, as in that to which attention is directed.

The geology of the neighbourhood is too well-known to require any very minute description, but it may be advisable to recall generally the nature of the formations there exposed. The area between Aldershot on the south, and Wokingham on the north, is occupied by the sands, clays, and gravels of the

Bagshot series, and it is to the relative positions of these materials that the situation and character of the numerous ranges of low flat-topped hills of most irregular outline, which occupy the country between the various small river lines, are mainly due. These hills are composed chiefly of the Upper Bagshot sands, and to their capping of gravel is to be attributed their resistance to the disintegrating action of rain and weather, and their consequent existence as high land. In the valleys, that of the Blackwater more particularly, the middle beds of green sands and clay make their appearance, and these extend up to the base of the more elevated land, and occupy the lower portions of its valleys and ravines.

Physically, this part of England is varied and picturesque; but owing to the presence of so much sandy unfertile soil, the cultivation is confined generally to the valleys which mark the beds of rivulets and streams; and the hill-tops, surmounted either by sombre forests of pine trees, enlivened here and there by the delicate foliage of the silver birch, or crowned by long sweeps of gorse and heather, form a rich back ground to the more varied vegetation which characterises the thickly populated area occupying the lower land following the course of the Blackwater or the Bourn.

Almost in the very heart of one of these early forests, certainly in what not many years ago was extensively and densely wooded, lies the small valley in which the flints were found. A range of low hills, the summits of which are comparatively level, crosses in a direction nearly north and south the main London-Southampton road, near the village of York Town. From this plateau, and parallel to the highway, run two long irregular spurs, at the extremities of which, where they begin to sink into the lower land, is a small hollow, bounded on three of its sides by the spurs and their subordinate projections, and on the fourth side by a low oval hill; (see b, map, pl. xx).

It is necessary to call particular attention to the topographical peculiarities of this hill, in order to give grounds for the theory that has been advanced with regard to the Flint Station. The contour line or level, which in the Ordnance Survey follows the outline of the two spurs at the head of this hollow or minor valley, marks its shape with sufficient distinctness; but in surveying the area the small hill presented a most singular difficulty, for in drawing this portion of the ground, and representing its form by the horizontal lines, or "hachures," commonly used in England for military drawing, it appeared as if the hill had no connection with the contour line, but was completely isolated, and so situated as to give one the impression (entirely on account of its abnormal position with reference to the levels)

that the true contour line must have, at some period, passed not through the valley, as it does now, but outside the small hill, including it in its irregular curve. It was the fact that this hill was and is a puzzle to the draughtsman, that first called attention to the physical peculiarities of the ground.

On further examination, streams were discovered running on either side of the hill, one being much larger than the other, but both proceeding from the higher level; and the hill itself was not merely steeper and higher at the extremity nearest the valley, but had a considerable deposit of superficial gravel round the sides and towards the lower end where it sinks into the plain.

It appeared as if the streamlets had worn away the hill into its present shape, thus depositing the gravel on the lower ground. The summit, again, was crowned with a thin gravel bed, and this lay on the same level as a bed of the same material, which could be traced for a short distance on the spurs enclosing the upper portion of the valley; and hence, if it be assumed that these beds formed portions of the same small gravel beach, surrounding a tiny lake, it could be readily imagined that the hill itself, now worn away on either side by the disintegrating action of the streams, was the remnant of the dam, so to speak, that pent the waters up.

The nature of the bottom of the valley gave some colour to this assumption. Its section some short distance up, towards the higher ground, consisted of-first, a little surface sand and soil, next a thin layer of a stiff yellow clay in large lenticular masses, then of the deep green sand which characterises the Middle Bagshot beds, and finally at a depth of about 3′ or 4′ a band of white clay. There were many fragments of wood, chiefly birch, in these clays; and in the lower white band especially, but also in the upper layers, were very numerous fragments of reeds and marshy vegetation, giving forth a silty smell. Nearer the little hill before referred to, the upper clay was covered by about 2' of sand, and had this been a veritable lake area, similar conditions would, to some extent, have obtained.

The upper part of the valley is under cultivation; but at the lower part, at the junction of the two streams which drain it, and which now unite to form one running along the northern side of the hill, is a small bare sandy space dotted with clusters of coarse grass and heather. There were traces of an attempt at cultivation at intervals, but they were of a very ill-defined character.

The first discovery of the existence of flint flakes was made by Capt. Richards at the extremity of the valley nearest the hill, Numerous flakes, well-defined and of different sizes, were found scattered closely together on the surface of the ground, and on

further examination, by excavating to the depth of about l'or 18", a large number of flakes, with several cores, and two implements of palæolithic type, were found.

The flakes were very varied in shape, many being broad leafshaped fragments of the arrow-head size, but the majority were long simple flakes of the usual character, with well-defined lobes of percussion. None seemed to have been worked into small implements, though a number bore marks of usage as sidescrapers. By far the larger number were, of course, merely rough outsiders, but the minute fragments produced in knapping larger flints were extremely numerous.

The implements, though undoubtedly of the same age, and made somewhat in the same way, differed materially in their character. One was formed from a long cylindrical flint, one end of which had been left smooth and untouched to form a handle, but the other had been carefully knapped, and the point of a shoe-shaped instrument produced, the lower side of which was flat, and the upper surface somewhat ridged or rounded. The other specimen (pl. xxi) is completely finished from a bright yellow-tinted flint, and is of an oval or shoe-shaped form. The lower surface is nearly flat, this effect being produced by the removal of flakes running along its length; and on the upper side the flakes have been struck from a hog-backed ridge; with the ends symmetrically rounded off. On each side are marks of wear, which may have been caused by use as a kind of heavy scraper, or perhaps from being attached by withes or ligatures to a rod, in much the same way as the blacksmith holds his chisel. The want of wear at the extremities militates against the theory that it was actually used in this manner, but it is possible that it may be the relic of a larger implement which had been worn down and then re-knapped for further service. This may have been the cause of its rejection, as it may not in its altered state have satisfied the workman and been therefore cast aside.

It seems very probable that implements were often thus refashioned, for many flakes with clean cut sharp edges were found, the upper surface of which bore the marks of the removal of many chips; and from the small size of the flake these could scarcely have been struck off when in its present shape without great difficulty. If, however, it originally formed part of the surface of a larger implement, it may have been removed during the process of improving or re-shaping the older tool.

The cores were numerous and frequently very small, evidently having been merely used to produce side-scrapers.

The area in which this set of relics occurred was very limited, though in it they were numerous; but starting from the point