Journal of Proceedings. xxxv 



was particularly struck with the stone spear-head so fashioned as to 

 give the weapon a rotatory motion in the air, and thus increase the 

 accuracy of flight. This specimen was especially interesting to him 

 because it came from America. When he was travelling there he 

 noticed that the arrows of the aborigines of the Amazon valley were 

 fringed with feathers arranged spirally round the shafts so as to keep 

 the weapon in a straight path when projected. In many other parts, 

 as for instance in New Guinea, weapons are not so "rifled," and it was, 

 therefore, a very noteworthy fact that the custom of rifling spears and 

 arrows had persisted in America from the earliest stone ages until now. 

 In Mr. Wallace's opinion the carved figures of men and animals 

 which Sir Antonio Brady had exhibited were also of the very greatest 

 interest ; they were of such intense interest that it was difficult to 

 believe they were genuine. If he remembered rightly, the animal 

 carvings of Reindeer, Mammoth, &c., which had hitherto been dis- 

 covered were all of a period supposed to be intermediate between the 

 Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages — the " Reindeer Period " of M. Lartet; 

 but it was evident, Sir Antonio's carvings being accepted as genuine, 

 that such were not by any means the oldest. They had represented 

 by them not only the animals then existing, but also the men who fed 

 upon them ; of the hunter as well as the hunted. It must be remem- 

 bered that savages always depicted in their carvings and drawings 

 their own type, and therefore we may take the figures carved upon the 

 bones to represent the type of face which prevailed among the hunters 

 of the Mammoth. One of the carvings presented a curious resemblance 

 to the profile of the Duke'of Wellington, and accepting that as a contem- 

 poraneous carving, they might draw therefrom the conclusion that the 

 early hunters of the Mammoth were by no means a low and degraded race. 

 This was an exceedingly interesting point in connection with the ques- 

 tion of the antiquity of man. We have not made the slightest approach 

 towards the discovery of a lower type. Although we have been enabled 

 to trace the Old World hunter back to the Pleistocene age, he remains 

 as much man as the most intelligent races of the present day. Of course 

 he did not mean therefore to infer that men of a lower type had not 

 existed, but he believed that they must go immensely further back to 

 discover the first traces of primeval man. He did not agree with 

 Professor Boyd Dawkins in the inference that man did not exist in the 

 Miocene age because the animals which must have surrounded him, 

 being of forms which had developed into other species, man would 

 have therefore been influenced by the law of development, and in the 

 succeeding ages would have presented characters very different from 

 the genus Homo as at present existing. Mr. Wallace was disposed to 

 think that, man having reached a certain stage of development, his 

 physical and mental qualities would enable him rather to control than 

 be controlled by the changing character of his environment ; and there- 



