192 AXXIVEKSARY ADDKESS 



showing a very simple form of mounting an axe. Here is another 

 from New Caledonia, showing how far the development of art had 

 gone while stone was still in use. The hlade is inserted into a 

 wooden socket, bound round in the most artistic way to prevent it 

 from splitting, and attached to a stout handle in a very ingenious 

 manner. 



In tracing back our antiquities in this country, we also come to 

 a period when nothing but stone was in use for cutting purposes. 

 We find, for instance, hatchets made of stone carefully ground to 

 an edge, and shaped in a similar manner to those in use in Xew 

 Guinea and various islands of the Pacific. These belong to the 

 Polished Stone Period, or Neolithic Period — the period which pre- 

 ceded the use of bronze. Now we know that at the time of Julius 

 Csesar, iron was already beginning to be known in Britain, and 

 bronze was dying or had died out of use. The use of bronze in 

 this country probably extended over about a thousand years, which 

 would give a date of 1000 or 1200 b.c. for the more recent of the 

 ordinary stone instruments. How much further back their use 

 might be carried it is impossible to say ; but however far back, 

 we find they belong to what must be regarded as a comparatively 

 recent period, when compared with the period in which certain 

 other implements were made. The later or Polished Stone Period 

 received the name Neolithic (New Stone) or Surface Period, from 

 these things being found on the surface ; and the other the Palaeo- 

 lithic (Old Stone) or Drift Period, inasmuch as the implements were 

 found, as a rule, not on the surface, but in deposits of a late 

 geological age, and associated with animals in many cases not 

 living in the districts at the present time, but which are either 

 extinct or have migrated from the places where they originally 

 lived. It is with regard to this Palaeolithic Age that I am going 

 to say a few words this evening. 



The Palaeolithic instruments may be rouglily divided into two 

 classes — those found in caves, and those found in the gravels. 

 There is some difficulty in ascertaining the relative chronology of 

 these two classes of deposits ; but in all probability many of the 

 caves belong to a more recent period than the older of the gravels. 

 But with regard to the question of chronology I shall have more 

 to say when I get further into the subject. 



The fact of the association of man with the extinct animals 

 in cavern deposits is by no means a new one. It has been treated 

 of by Toumal, Christol, Schmerling, and others in Franco and 

 Belgium ; and about fifty years ago Mr. MacEnery also observed 

 it in Kent's Cavern, in Devonshire, though induced to suppress 



