296 PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



the neigliborhoocT of Abbeville, while those of the spear-shape prevail near 

 Amieias." 



Mr. Evans then points out that, among the implements discovered in Kent's 

 Hole Cavern, there were some identical in form with the oval flints from Abbe- 

 ville ; but he adds, " in character they do not resemble any of the ordinary 

 stone implements with which I am acquainted." 



It is obvious that a great, if not undue stress is laid on this dissimilarity 

 between the flint implements of the Drift and those of the more recent Stone 

 Period, with the assumed Celtic origin of its flait and stone manufactures. Nor 

 is this wonderful when the vast interval is considered which the geologist now 

 assumes to intervene between the production of the two classes of works. Sir 

 Charles Lyell, when addressing the Geological Section of the British Associa- 

 tion, remarked, with cautious yet suggestive force, in reference to the secular 

 phenomena indicated by the fluviatile gravel of Abbeville and Amiens : 



" To explain these changes, I should infer considerable oscillations in the level 

 of the land in that part of France ; slow movements of upheaval and subsidence, 

 deranging, but not wholly displacing, the course of the ancient river. Lastly, 

 the disappearance of the elephant, rlnnocerus, and other genera of quadrupeds 

 now foreign to Europe, implies, in like manner, a vast lapse of ages, separaimg 

 the era in which the fossil implements were framed and that of the invasion of 

 Gaul by the Romans." 



If man's place in nature, and his true relation to the inferior orders of being 

 be still undetermined, and the possibility of his development from the anthropoid 

 apes or others of the lower animals be admitted, then the first indices of animal 

 instinct passing into inventive mechanical skill will j)0ssess a peculiar significance. 

 Whether, moreover, Ave accept or reject the unwelcome theory of the structural 

 interval between the organization of man and the lower animals being the prac- 

 tical element of difference, and one sufficiently slight to require only an adequate 

 lapse of time for its being bridged over by secondary causes in constant operation 

 throughout the organic world: the comparison between the arts of ages so remote as 

 those of the Drift Folk, and the British Celt of the Roman period, or the Amer- 

 ican Indian of the nineteenth century cannot be devoid of interest. But America 

 also has her ancient, and possibly her drift flint-implements ; and as the analogies 

 between the works of her modern aborigines and those of the later European 

 Stone Period are obvious and remarkable, though separated by at least two 

 thousand years ; a comparison of the oLdest traces of human art on the two 

 hemispheres may involve very significant diisclosures in reference to the general 

 question of the development of the mechanical and artistic fticulties of man. 



So impressed was my mind with the striking bearing of the supposed fact 

 reiterated by Prestwich, Evans, Lyell, and others, of the uniformity of char- 

 acter, amounting to specific typical forms, and of the massive rudeness of the 

 works of art of the drift, that it was with some sense of disappointment I re- 

 ceived a flint instrument believed to have been recovered from the American 

 drift, and found it fail in any correspondence with the post-pliocene manufac- 

 tures of Europe. The characteristics assigned to the formei", separate their era, 

 to all appearance, by a diversity of the mental character expressed in them, as 

 works of human art, from the nearly uniform fjint and stone implements of the 

 most ancient European stone period seemingly of historic times and existing 

 savage nations. The confirmation it seems to lend to the idea of a condition 

 of human intellect more rudimentary than that of the rudest savage hitherto 

 known gives importance to the data on which such an influence rests. In the 

 summer of 1852 I learned from ih-. William Hay, architect, of a flint implement 

 recovered by a gold-digger from the drift near Pike's peak, Kansas Territory, 

 and immediately instituted inquiries about it, not without some expectation of 

 lindlng in it a repetition of one of the large typical forms of Abbeville or 

 Amiens. In this, however, I was disappointed. The interesting object which 



