The general reader must be content to rely to a great extent on the verdict of _experts_, and in this instance of Puy Courny need not perhaps go further than the conclusion of the French Congress of archæologists, who pronounced in favour both of their Miocene and human origin. It may be well, however, to annex a plate showing in two instances how closely the specimens from Puy Courny resemble those of later periods, of the human origin of which no doubt has ever been entertained. It is certainly carrying scientific scepticism to an unreasonable pitch to doubt that whatever cause fashioned the two lower figures, the same cause must equally have fashioned the upper ones; and if that cause be human intelligence in the Quaternary period it must have been human or human-like intelligence in the Upper Miocene. [Illustration: COPARE QUATERNARY IMPLEMENTS. WOKEY HOLE--GLACIAL. (Evans, _Stone Implements_, p 473.) PLATEAU DRIFT. North Downs, Kent (Prestwich).] The evidence for the still older implements of Thenay is of the same nature as that for those of Puy Courny. First as regards the geological horizon. Subjoined is the section at Thenay as made by M. Bourgeois, verified by MM. Vibraye, Delaunay, Schmidt, Belgrand, and others, from personal inspection, and given by M. Hamy in his _Palæontologie humaine_. It would seem that there could be little doubt as to the geological position of the strata from which the alleged chipped flints come. The Faluns are a well-known marine deposit of a shallow sea spread over a great part of Central and Southern France, and identified, beyond a doubt, as Upper Miocene by its shells. The Orleans Sands are another Miocene deposit perfectly characterized by its mammalian fauna, in which the _Mastodon Angustidens_ first appears, with other peculiar species. The Calcaire de Beauce is a solid freshwater limestone formed in the great lake which in the Miocene age occupied the plain of the Beauce and extended into Touraine. It forms a clear horizon or dividing line between the Upper Miocene, characterized by the Mastodon, and the Lower Miocene, of which the Acrotherium, a four-toed and hornless rhinoceros, is the most characteristic fossil. [Illustration: SECTION AT THENAY.]