1889-90.] ARCH^OLOGICAL REMAINS. 67 



ARCH^OLOGICAL REMAINS, A FACTOR IN THE 

 STUDY OF HISTORY. 



By David Boyle. 



Read at Niagara ^rd July, i8go. 



When we compare the neoHths, the bronzes, the cromlechs, and the 

 architectural ruins that afford material for archaeological study in many 

 other countries, both in the Old and New Worlds, with the " finds " that 

 reward the student in Canada, it must be quite apparent that so far, at 

 all events as variety and quality are concerned, the Canadian is at a con- 

 siderable disadvantage. They too, as well as we, have palseoliths, while 

 we can barely lay claim to having aught else. 



I say " barely," because, although it is true that many of the aboriginal 

 relics of this country are as ingeniously constructed, and as finely finished 

 as are many of those belonging to the neolithic periods of Europe, they 

 are found so intimately associated with the equivalents of old world 

 palaeoliths, that it has been found impossible to make here the distinctions 

 that characterize European specimens. 



Within the last few years discoveries of rudely worked flints have been 

 made deep in gravel beds, by Dr. Abbott in New Jersey, and by others 

 as far west as Ohio and Minnesota. The position of these weapons or 

 implements favors the belief that man on this portion of the continent 

 was contemporary with the glaciers by whose agency the gravel beds 

 were deposited, and if this view is confirmed, it will be in order to dis- 

 tinguish the glacial from the more recent specimens by means of some 

 such designations as are now applied to the relics of ancient man in the 

 mother countries. 



Up to the present time, however, there has been no well authenticated 

 discovery of co-glacial relics in Ontario, or, so far as I am aware, in any 

 part of the Dominion, and yet the probabilities are as strongly in favor 

 of their being found here as in the places mentioned. But to revert to 

 the comparison made with other countries, our disadvantage in the mat- 

 ter of quality and variety is fully compensated on other grounds. Here 

 we are not only studying the life-history of those who ante-dated the 

 arrival of the superior invading race, but of a people whose representa- 

 tives came directly into contact with our own, scarcely less than four 



