Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/389

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PREHISTORIC MAN IN BURMA.
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as well as from our first day's work, when we had approached from the opposite direction, that we were as near No. 49 as we could ever hope to be, and that the locality answered with sufficient accuracy to the description and drawing given by Dr. Noetling. It was, of course, impossible to be wrong except in a north and south direction, as the ferruginous conglomerate is unmistakable, and occurs only once on the eastern side, and, as we had estimated the distance with the map both from Minlin Hill and from the cart-road to the north, we could feel fairly certain of the exact spot. We breakfasted on the plateau, about one hundred and fifty yards back from the edge, and afterwards, while I was endeavouring to fit together the fragments of tooth I had found, Col. Nichols walked a little farther to the east over the plateau to survey the direction of the "yos," and returned with a handful of flint chips which he had picked up on the plateau not thirty yards off. They were very irregular pieces, and not at all promising, but they were at any rate flint chips, and we instituted a search on the spot, assisted by our Burman servant and the cart-man. Within a radius of about fifty yards we found a considerable number of pieces of different sizes and shapes, from large rough lumps almost as big as the fist down to little shavings; and, as they were easily seen lying on the brown earth among the short dry grass, we managed to collect, within half an hour or so, a cartridge-wallet full. Unfortunately, it seemed to us at the time so unlikely that these pieces should really be identical with those considered by Dr. Noetling to be Tertiary flints, that we did not notice many details as to how they were lying which might have been useful. We noticed, however, that the pieces were most numerous in the centre of the area, and quickly grew less common at the outside, and after a little ceased altogether. The larger pieces were all, I believe, found somewhere near the centre of the area. The impression we got at the time was that some lumps of flint had been either found or brought there, and had been broken up on the spot for some purpose, and that what we had found were the remains of that operation. We did not examine them very carefully at once, but detected one or two cores, and one or two pieces that might have been rough implements.

Having collected all we could without a very prolonged search