466 
ship, in the Royal Museum at Berlin, whose edges are produced 
by sharpened filaments of flint. I need scarcely remind you 
that the weapons of the Mexicans were in like manner armed 
with portions of obsidian. Now, the cases to which I allude 
are not solitary, but numerous. Upwards of forty have, I 
believe, been collected in the alluvial tract wherein the waters 
of the Somme now flow, and in all probability they would be 
much more numerous had due observation been exercised by 
collectors. One single instance is, however, known to me as 
having occurred in the British Islands, and that within a few 
weeks only. In the tract called Wychwood Forest, in Ox- 
fordshire, the surveyors employed by the Government dis- 
covered a rude interment, little below the surface, but which 
had apparently never been disturbed. Together with pot- 
tery, of the oldest description, and bones of various kinds, 
was found such a portion as I have described of stag’s horn, 
so prepared to receive a cutting edge. Mr. Queckett, of the 
. College of Surgeons, to whom this was shown, investigated 
it by the aid of a microscope, and declared it to be a portion 
of the horn of a deer long extinct in England 
«« Now, Gentlemen, we may fully admit that many imple- 
ments of stone which are discovered do belong to the earliest 
period of human culture, and that the analogies upon which 
the so-called Stone period has been rested are not entirely to 
be despised; but experience teaches us that the use of stone 
continued long after those ages passed; and it is consonant to 
human nature itself that this should be the case. The weapon 
which, when launched by the hand, is not to return to its 
owner, may easily be of less valuable material than that which 
the man looks upon as connected with his own person; and 
thus the arrow-head of flint may easily have been contempo- 
raneous with the period of Iron. The want of value in the 
material pointed it out for the manufacture of these articles, 
the use of which implied their loss. We have the historical 
evidence of Ammianus Marcellinus that the Huns—a race un- 
