ARTS IN THE STONE AGE. 



345 



fossil shells and bones, and thought with Dr. Martin Lister, that they 

 might he " the efforts of some plastic power, in the earth, being the 

 regular workings of Nature, whereby she sometimes seems to sport 

 and play, and make little flourishes and imitations of things, to set 

 off and embellish her more useful structures." 



Fig. 2. Hatchet from the Solway Mos3. 



But, since the discoveries in the Somme Valley were recognized, a 

 flood of light has been shed upon the subject. These dry bones live, 

 and these rude stones are found to be useful, indeed indispensable, ma- 

 terials for building up the earliest history of the human race. The 

 savants of every country in Europe have hastened to take part in an 

 inquiry so novel and so interesting ; many volumes of memoirs have 

 been written ; our French neighbors, with their usual vivacity, have 



Fig. 8. Axe-Hammer, Thames, London. 



established a journal devoted to prehistoric archaeology, as well as 

 an annual Gongres / and these researches having been for several 

 years conducted by so many able and eager observers, we need not 

 wonder that Mr. Evans, having studied the whole bibliography of the 

 subject, both ancient and modern, and explored every considerable 

 museum or collection, is now enabled to produce this encyclopaedia of 

 the new-born science, which for want of a better word may, perhaps, 

 be called petrology or petro-tomology. He has introduced us into the 

 workshops and armories of our most remote predecessors, it may be 

 of our ancestors, as they existed not at any particular epoch, but in 



