GEOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITIES. 337 



even though many of the forms in use may be mere resuscitations 

 of what have been developed in more ancient times under proba- 

 bly somewhat analogous circumstances. There can, indeed, be 

 no doubt that every material object we use, however recently 

 invented, bears upon it the reflection, more or less distinct, of 

 something which has gone before ; so that, in fact, each newly 

 invented appliance is but the descendant from some other of earlier 

 date ; and though varying from it in a greater or less degree, yet 

 still deriving its form and character by the way of legitimate 

 descent. The rifled cannon of the present day is a modified 

 descendant of the smooth bore ; and this (if history is to be 

 believed) of the mortar of Friar Bacon, which, in its turn, was 

 an improved form of the first pounding apparatus, a slightly 

 hollow stone on which to pound, and a pebble to use as a pestle. 

 The reaping-machine, whether of the present time or of the days 

 of Pliny, is but an adaptation of the iron sickle, which traces its 

 ancestry through the family of bronze sickles and knives to that 

 of the old flint flakes. It is, in fact, the old story, the force of 

 which had, however, been but so recently appreciated, that of 

 constant tendency to change, accompanied by the survival of the 

 fitted forms for the sphere in which they are placed ; and in the 

 same way, as the most eminent living naturalist conceives it not 

 only possible but probable, that all animals have descended from, 

 at most, only 4. or 5 progenitors, and all plants from an equal or 

 lesser number, so I think that an examination of the history of 

 human arts and manufactures will reduce the material appliances 

 possessed by our first progenitors to at least as small a tale. 



"We may, indeed, reverse the comparison of Darwin, and, 

 instead of arguing from complex pieces of machinery to organ- 

 isms, regard the mechanical contrivances of man in the same 

 manner as the naturalists of his method of thinking would regard 

 some organism. In some instances, and especially in the case of 

 ornaments, the rate of change may be very rapid. A better illus- 

 tration of this can hardly be found than in tracing back the bonnets 

 of ladies of the present day to the broad-brimmed hat of the last 

 century, of which it is the direct descendant, and to which the 

 most modern forms now show a tendency to revert. But what- 

 ever may be the amount of persistency or of variation in form, 

 there can be little doubt that in almost all cases the farther back 

 we trace any instrument or appliance, the simpler shall we find it, 

 both in form and material. The normal transition is, of course, 

 from the use of the well-known division of the stages of human 

 culture into those of stone, bronze, andiron, and is one which in all 

 probability will be found to hold good in every portion of the 

 globe, the occupation of which by man extends back to an epoch 

 more than 2,000 or 3,000 years remote from the present time. Much 

 mischief, however, may be done by regarding all ancient objects 

 of stone or bronze as of necessity belonging to the stone or 

 bronze age, and by using these terms as if they had some chro- 

 nological signification, instead of their being merely convenient 

 forms of indicating, in a succinct manner, certain stages of 

 culture." 



