an animal provides the wherewithal for the primeval lanyard 

 which carried the eelt, for the fastening with which it might be 

 bound to a wooden handle, or for the string of the necklace of 

 shells or teeth. The use of a pebble of the brook, whether as 

 hammer or as projectile, is, Professor Boulger remarked, so 

 simple that I do not think it necessary to assume that any time 

 need have elapsed before man arrived at it. 



Professor Boulger quoted from Dr. Semon's descriptions 

 of the natives of Australia. All their weapons are " of stone, 

 shell, bone, wood, vegetable fibre, and animal sinew." Their 

 "culture stands on a level comparable to the stone age of our 

 European ancestors. The use and treatment of metal is entirely 

 unknown, though of course the tribes in communication with 

 whites freely use the steel knives and tomahawks given to them, 

 preferring them when once they have them to their clumsy self- 

 made stone arms." The Australian, the Professor added, is 

 entirely ignorant of pottery, nor does he practice agriculture in 

 any form ; and Dr. Semon is of opinion that even the boomerang, 

 the only object of native manufacture which is superior to any- 

 thing of the kind made by other races, may have been discovered 

 accidentally. But even the careful copying of such an acci- 

 dentally-discovered pattern and the constant transmission of the 

 type from generation to generation says something for their 

 culture. 



It is universally agreed that man in advancing from his prime- 

 val state is for a lengthy period in the nomad hunter stage before 

 he takes to the pastoral or to the agricultural state. The evidence 

 of remains seems everywhere to justify this conclusion ; and, 

 though what has, perhaps unwisely, been called the Stone Age was 

 certainly not in simultaneous existence in many countries, the 

 similarity of the remains referable to it from diiferent lands is 

 undoubtedly remarkable. From Canada to Patagonia, from our 

 own river-drifts to the Upper Nile and the laterite clays of India, 

 the type is, speaking generally, the same. Yet undoubtedly the 

 date of this stone stage of culture, and especially the date of its 

 close, was totally different in the Valley of the Nile, in India, in 

 Britain, and in Australia. 



Some interesting speculations on the life of man in this 

 dawn of the race were advanced by the Lecturer. He observed 

 that " Canon Tristram long ago pointed out how Arab hunters 

 to-day occupy caverns alternately with the hyaena, coming to hunt 

 in a district until the game is exhausted, and driving out the 

 four-footed troglodytes, who return on their departure. Kent's 

 Cavern, Torquay, and many another pre-historic cavern bore 

 testimony to an identical state of things in the remote past." 



Now to these primitive hunters hunting was a necessity. 

 We speak of it as "sport," of our quarry as "game" ; but to 



