354 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that the entire surfaces of the faces and the sides exhibit a polish 

 which could only have been obtained by long and apparently profitless 

 labor. And not only so, but many of these are very fragile, being 

 slightly made, and of delicate workmanship, and others are of such 

 small dimensions that, as M. Boucher de Perthes pointed out, they 

 never could have been available for any kind of hard work. Many 

 of these exhibit no signs whatever of fracture or even of scratching, 

 either at the butt or the edge indications which could not possibly 

 have bepn wanting, had they ever been used for weapons or tools. 

 Besides which, while many of the districts, in which they are found, 

 contain abundance of rocks suitable for all ordinary purposes, these 

 implements are often made from Asiatic jade, jadeite, tremolite, serpen- 

 tine, green porphyry, nephrite, and other stones of beautiful colors, 

 and capable of taking a high polish, many of which must have been 

 brought from great distances, and would have been very costly both 

 to import and to work. The museums in Brittany, and particularly 

 that at Vannes, are very rich in jadeite implements of this kind, but 

 they are also found frequently both in England and Scotland. 



Fig. 5. Jet Armlet, from Guernsey. 



Fig. 9. Bronze Armlet, from Guernsey. 



But, if we conclude, as we must, with the author, that implements, 

 for which such beautiful and intractable materials were selected, could 

 hardly have been in common use, we may indulge in some speculation 

 as to what were the uses they were designed to serve, notwithstanding 

 that, as Mr. Evans says, we have not sufficient ground for arriving at 

 any trustworthy conclusion. M. Boucher de Perthes thought that 

 they were deposited by the survivors in the graves of deceased friends, 

 as useful to them on their resurrection, and he argued from this their 

 belief in a future state. It seems, however, hardly probable that ob- 

 jects, many of which obviously could not be serviceable, should be 

 placed in tombs under the belief that tney would be so at some future 

 date. In the absence of any more satisfactory explanation, it may be 

 suggested that these things were intended by our remote predecessors 

 to represent the deities whom they worshipped, and that, by their va- 

 ried sizes and shapes, they indicated the ranks and orders of their 

 idols. We may believe that men, not having learned the art of repre- 

 senting the human or animal form, were obliged to content themselves 



