43 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



guarded against, and cross-questioned, and 

 watched ; and, as he seldom insures in com- 

 plete free-will, but is compelled by his rela- 

 tives, or his wife's relatives, or his creditors, 

 he is unusually and unduly affected by his 

 treatment." The minuteness of the medi- 

 cal inquiry required as a preliminary to in- 

 surance operates as a deterrent. The can- 

 didate does not like to have symptoms 

 discovered by an over-zealous examiner 

 which arc invisible to laymen, and even to 

 himself ; " to have all his weak places found 

 out ; to stand a cross-examination from a 

 man he did not select, and regards, for the 

 moment, as an enemy, as to his habits of 

 life ; or to run the risk of the shock involved 

 in a rejection, for reasons left unexplained." 

 Insurance is a business in which a much 

 slighter annoyance than this will turn a 

 waverer, and induce him to resolve that he 

 will save his money to himself. The value 

 of the inquiry is, moreover, vastly overrated. 

 The physician may be able to decide upon 

 the candidate's bodily condition at the mo- 

 ment, but he can not decide what it will be 

 three months hence, nor estimate " that 

 quality of vitality which, and not health, is 

 the question for the insurance-office." Per- 

 sons who seem almost at the point of death 

 frequently live for years ; while those who 

 appear most vigorous are as subject as any 

 to quick death from fever. Persons also 

 hesitate to insure because they can never 

 understand the financial condition of the 

 company, or satisfy themselves that they 

 can get back the money they pay in premi- 

 ums. More clear statements of accounts 

 would commend the offices to a degree of 

 confidence they do not now enjoy ; and a 

 provision by which the loss of premiums al- 

 ready paid in, in case of default, would be 

 obviated, would go far toward strengthen- 

 ing the courage of the weak, and toward 

 meeting the secret apprehension of the in- 

 tending insurer that he might not be able 

 to keep up his insurance. 



Coeval Grades of Civilization. A writer 

 in " Blackwood's Magazine " has found, in 

 the Island of Coll, of the Hebrides, evidence 

 of the co-existence of widely removed de- 

 grees of civilization at an extremely remote 

 antiquity. The storm of December, 1S79, 

 which caused the destruction of the Tay 



Bridge, also effected the removal of a few 

 inches of sand from the bottom of a deep 

 sand-valley near the castle, and exposed a 

 number of old dwellings and human remains. 

 Among the remains were kitchen-middens 

 like those of Denmark, composed of littoral 

 shells ; bones and teeth of wild and domes- 

 tic animals, split up for the sake of their 

 marrow ; chips of flint, all unpolished or 

 paleolithic ; and many fragments of rude, 

 unglazed pottery. Along with these, in one 

 of the heaps, were two curious bronze im- 

 plements or ornaments, one of them a rich 

 penannular brooch, of considerable beauty 

 and finish, jeweled in twelve holes, and 

 bearing distinct traces of having been gilt. 

 The other ornament was a bronze pin, which 

 had apparently been molded. Here, then, 

 " at the most remote point of the prehistoric 

 life of Coll to which we can reach, we find 

 man, if a savage, still a person of taste, who 

 could appreciate high art, and knew how to 

 supply the wants of the dandy." These 

 people carried on a commerce, for they had 

 flints, which are not found in Coll, or any- 

 where near it, and were acquainted with the 

 art of sailing, for their flints must have 

 been brought from the south of England. 

 The antiquity of the remains is estimated 

 from their geological situation. They lie 

 in the bottom of a shifting-sand valley, 

 with large masses of sand around them, in a 

 situation where no man would have ventured 

 to settle if the sand had then been in the 

 neighborhood to anything like the extent 

 it is now. The sand is the result of the 

 disintegration of the shells of snails which 

 live on the island, and must, the most of 

 it, have accumulated since the village was 

 occupied. A palaeolithic age and a con- 

 siderable degree of civilization were coeval 

 then in the Hebrides, and they are coeval 

 there now. At Tiree, which is separated 

 from Coll by a channel only two miles wide, 

 craggans and other articles of pottery, ex- 

 actly similar to these paleolithic ones of 

 Coll, are manufactured and used at this day. 

 " The old woman of Tiree, in this very year, 

 takes the brown, stiff clay at her cabin- 

 door, picks the pebbles out of it, pounds it 

 down and softens it with a rude wooden 

 mallet, molds it into shape with her rough, 

 horny hands, and, without the aid of a pot- 

 ter's wheel, ornaments it, after a time-hon- 



