ARTS IN THE STONE AGE. 347 



subject are found in a very confused and dislocated condition, it is a 

 work of no small labor to classify and arrange them in order of date, 

 or rather of sequence, and thus none but a rough and wide scheme 

 of classification is possible. The Danish and French authors, as well 

 as many of our own, usually divide the stone-implement period into 

 two principal stages only, the paleolithic and neolithic unpolished 

 and polished; placing them both before what has been called the 

 Bronze age. This arrangement, however, although found convenient 

 for popular use, and in that sense adopted by Mr. Evans, can hardly 

 be regarded as scientifically accurate; as he has himself observed, 

 there are blanks in the chronology of stone implements, which it is 

 hard to fill up. The classification may be, and indeed is, too wide in 

 one respect, and too limited in another. While, on the one hand, the 

 drift and the cave implement periods, which are usually bracketed to- 

 gether as paleolithic, are characterized by very various conditions, 

 both paleontological and geological, and, indeed, technological also 

 conditions which may indicate their separation by a vast interval of 

 time ; so, on the other hand, as Mr. Evans has shown at the close of 

 the fourth chapter, some of the unpolished stones, chipped or rough- 

 hewn celts, were probably of a date not earlier than some that were 

 ground and polished ; and, in Great Britain, at least, there are not 

 wanting indications that the use of bronze was coeval with the pol- 

 ished-stone period, if not, indeed, with one or two exceptions (which 

 were probably imports) anterior to it. 



One of the most perplexing questions suggested by the discovery 

 of the drift-implements relates to the means by which they came into 

 their present position. They are often met with at a depth of twenty 

 or even thirty feet, usually at or near the base of thick beds of coarse 

 flint-gravel, which in its turn is overlain by masses, more or less thick, 

 of brick-earth or loess. Occasionally, and indeed not rarely, they 

 occur entirely beneath the gravels, and on the surface of the subjacent 

 rock, whatever it may chance to be. Mr. Evans deals with them 

 merely as constituent portions of the beds of sand, gravel, and clay, 

 in which they occur, and so indeed they now are, but they are some- 

 thing more. Although of the drift, drifty, each has its own separate 

 history ; for each has been held and fashioned by hands guided by an 

 intelligent will, and thus we are led irresistibly to inquire when, and 

 why, and how did they come where we now see them, and why are 

 they never found on the surface, nor under any other conditions ? 



To a certain extent this inquiry is involved in the far larger ques- 

 tion of the forces by means of which the superficial gravels, of which 

 the implements are as it were but the accidents, became dispersed a 

 subject which does not necessarily come within the scope of a work 

 designed to be technological rather than geological. Mr. Evans has, 

 however, very judiciously devoted one of his chapters to it ; and, as it 

 is one of great interest, and is still involved in much obscurity, we 



