Discussion of "On Flint Implements Recently Discovered in North Devon", by Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace : Alfred Wallace : A. R. Wallace :
Russel Wallace : Alfred Russell Wallace (sic)

Discussion of 'On Flint Implements Recently
Discovered in North Devon' (S122: 1866)
Editor Charles H. Smith's Note: Third party rendering of words Wallace offered in discussion of 'On Flint Implements Recently Discovered in North Devon,' a paper by H. S. Ellis read in Nottingham at the August 1866 meeting of the Dept. of Anthropology, Section D, Biology, of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Printed on page 863 of the 13 October 1866 issue of Reader. To link directly to this page, connect with: http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S122.htm

On Flint Implements recently Discovered in North Devon, by Mr. H. S. Ellis.

The author exhibited specimens.

Sir J. Lubbock suggested that some of the pieces of flint were probably used for drilling holes, and others for slingstones.

Mr. Wyatt said these flint implements which had been found in a submerged forest-bed, were of a much later epoch than that in which the first described implements were used, and they must on no account be regarded as similar.

The President [[Wallace]] remarked that if there was an exceedingly long period during which mankind existed all over Europe without any weapon except such as he could make from flints or stones, there could be no surprise as to the discovery of so large a number of those weapons. They must have been necessary to his existence, and for every weapon used twenty were probably spoiled, and hundreds of flakes must have been struck off. The wonder was rather, therefore, that they were not found everywhere, and it might probably be eventually concluded that districts where no flint weapons were found were not inhabited at all during the stone age.

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