Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/147

Rh them, and the marks of the stone axes were seen on the walls of the gallery.

Some sensation was recently created at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries (May 9, 1912), by Mr. Reginald Smith's paper on "The Date of Grime's Graves and Cissbury Flint-mines," in which he assigns the Cissbury group to the Palæolithic period, chiefly on the following grounds: "Certain finds in stratified deposits both here and abroad serve to link the typical Cissbury celt with the late river-gravel forms, and analogies between other types and those found in French caves suggest placing the Cissbury group in the Aurignac division of the Palæolithic cave period, which, at any rate abroad, was followed by a deposit of loess. Recent finds in France show that 'domesticated' animals existed at that period; and the absence of cold- loving animals such as the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and reindeer may perhaps be accounted for by the Gulf Stream; but these animals are also unrepresented on several important French sites. If the above view can be maintained there can be no hiatus question." But this conclusion would follow if Mr. Smith had assigned the Cissbury implements to the transition period to which they clearly belong.

Another class of implement, the use of which is unknown, is the so-called Shetland knife. A mere glance at these objects shows that they possess certain characteristics which place them in a special category among