INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS DURING THE YEAR 1874. cxxvii 



study. The cardinal defect of the speculators on the origin of 

 the human species seems to be the assumption that the pres- 

 ent geographical condition of the earth's surface preceded or 

 co-existed with the origin of species." He further advised 

 Orientalists to cast away " prepossessions as to time, place, 

 affinity, race, etc., for which there may not be rightly ob- 

 served, well-determined data, and to bring to bear on the 

 dark vistas of the past in human history the pure, dry light 

 of science." He also hoped to see the day " when truer terms 

 will be applied in ethnology to groups of peoples and of 

 tongues now called respectively Hammonic, Semitic, and 

 Japetic." 



PREHISTORIC NOTES OF GENERAL IMPORT. 



The question whether man already existed in tertiary 

 times is a topic now much discussed by French anthropolo- 

 gists. There have been found in tertiary strata Hints sup- 

 posed to bear the marks of human workmanship. Among 

 the principal supporters of this view are MM. G. de Mortillet, 

 Havelacque, and Bourgeois, the latter a Catholic clergyman. 

 Another interesting subject of discussion is the supposed 

 gap or hiatus between the paleolithic and neolithic phases 

 of the stone age, the neolithic period being distinguished 

 from the earlier phase, not only by chipped flint implements 

 of superior workmanship, but also by the process of grinding 

 and polishing in the manufacture of weapons ami tools of 

 stone. Some maintain that the later stone implements owe 

 their origin to a new people differing from the savage tribes 

 who were coeval with the extinct animals, and who employed 

 exclusivelv unoround flint tools of rude character; while 

 others question the reality of an interval between the two 

 phases, and ascribe the superiority of the more recent manu- 

 factures of stone to the gradually developed mechanical skill 

 of the primitive inhabitants of Europe. 



Mr. James Geikie lias published this year a work entitled 

 "The Great Ice Age, and its Relation to the Antiquity of 

 Man," in which he advances views differing from those held 

 by many other geologists. He is of opinion that certain 

 animals, whose remains occur commingled in river-s:rarels 

 and in caves, can not have existed in the same period, and 

 he therefore believes in alternate chancres or oscillations 



