46 DR. DANIEL WILSON ON 
by referring them to Celtic, Roman and Scandinavian art. Erroneous as this interpreta- 
tion of the evidence proves to have been, it had, nevertheless, sufficient accordance with 
truth to prepare the way for the ultimate reception of more accurate inductions. The fact of 
the occurrence of successive phases of art, and their indication of a succession of races, were 
undoubted ; and researches directed to the solution of the problem of European archeology 
were unhesitatingly followed up through medieval, classical, Assyrian and Eeyptian 
remains, to the very threshold of that prehistoric dawn which forms the transitional stage 
between geological and historical epochs. A significant fact, in its bearing on the recent dis- 
closures of the river drift in France and England, is that some of the most characteristic flint 
implements, such as the large spear-head found along with the remains of a fossil elephant 
in Gray’s Inn Lane, London, and implements of the same type obtained from the drift of 
the Waveney Valley, in Surrey, underlying similar fossil remains, had been brought under 
the notice of archæologists upwards of a century before the idea of the contemporaneous 
existence of man and the mammals of the Drift found any favour, and were unhesitatingly 
assigned to a Celtic origin. The first known discovery of any flint implement in the 
quaternary gravels of Europe stands recorded in the Sloane catalogue of the British 
Museum as “A British weapon found, with elephant’s tooth, opposite to black Mary’s, 
near Grayes Inn Lane.” 
A just conception of the comprehensiveness even of historical antiquity was long 
retarded in Europe by an exclusive devotion to classical studies ; but the relations of this 
continent to the Old World are so recent, and all else is so nearly a blank, that for it the 
fifteenth century is the historic dawn, and every thing dating before the landing of 
Columbus has been habitually assigned to the same vague antiquity. Hence historical 
research has been occupied for the most part on very modern remains, and the supreme 
triumph long aimed at has been to associate the hieroglyphics of Central America, and the 
architectoral monuments of Peru, with those of Egypt. But we have entered on a new 
era of archæological and historical enquiry. The palæolithie implements of the French 
Drift have only been brought to light in our own day; and, though upwards of half a 
century has elapsed since the researches of Mr. J. MacEnery were rewarded by the discoy- 
ery of flint implements of the earliest type in the same red loam of the Devonshire lime- 
stone caves which embedded bones of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, cave-bear 
and other extinct mammals, it is only very recently that the true significance of such dis- 
closures has been recognized. 
America was indeed little behind Europe in the earlier stages of cavern research. A 
cabinet of the British Museum is filled with fossil bones obtained by Dr. Lund and M. 
Claussen from limestone caverns in Brazil, embedded in a reddish-coloured loam, under a 
thick stalagmitic flooring, and including, along with remains of genera still inhabiting the 
American continent, those of extinct monkeys. Human bones were also found in the 
same caves, but superficially, and seemingly of the present Indian race. But a fresh in- 
terest and significance have been given to such researches by the novel aspect of prehistoric 
archeology in Europe. The relations now established between the earliest traces of Euro- 
pean man and the geological aspects of the great Drift formation, have naturally led to the 
diligent examination of corresponding deposits of the continent of America, in the hope of . 
recovering similar traces there. Until very recently, however, any supposed exam- 
ples of American palzeolithic art have been isolated and unsatisfactory. A flint knife was 
