16 coNCLTJSioisrs on aistcient climates. 



tained to be now altogether extinct ; in some others, both the ani 

 mals and the vegetables, though extant elsewhere, have ceased to 

 inhabit the regions where their remains are discovered. From 

 the character of the artificial objects, as compared with others be- 

 longing to known dates, or at least to known periods of civihza- 

 tion, ingenious inferences have been drawn as to their age ; and 

 from the vegetable remains which accompany them, as to the 

 climates of Central and JSTorthern Europe at the time of their 

 production. 



There are, however, sources of error which have not always 

 been sufficiently guarded against in making these estimates. 

 When a boat, composed of several pieces of wood fastened to- 

 gether by pins of the same material, is dug out of a bog, it is in- 

 ferred that the vessel, and the skeletons and implements found 

 with it, belong to an age when the use of iron was not known to 

 the builders. But this conclusion is not warranted by the simple 

 fact that metals were not employed in its construction ; for the 

 Ilfubians at this day build boats, large enough to carry haK a dozen 

 persons across the Nile, out of small pieces of acacia wood pinned 

 together entirely with wooden bolts, and large vessels of similar 

 construction are used by the islanders of the Malay archipelago. 

 Kor is the occurrence of flint arrowheads and knives, in conjunc- 

 tion with other evidences of human life, conclusive proof as to the 

 antiquity of the latter. Lyell informs that some Oriental tribes 

 still continue to use the same stone implements as their ancestors, 

 " after that mighty empires, where the use of metals in the arts 

 was weU known, had flourished for three thousand years in their 

 neighborhood "; * and the ITorth American Indians now manu- 

 facture weapons of stone, and even of glass, chipping them in the 

 latter case out of the bottoms of thick bottles with great f acihty.f 



* Antiquity of Man, p. 377. 



f " One of the Indians seated himself near me, and made from a fragment 

 of quartz, with a simple piece of round bone, one end of which was hemi- 

 spherical, with a small crease in it (as if worn by a thread) the sixteenth of an 

 inch deep, an arrow head which was very sharp and piercing, and such as they 

 use on all their arrows. The skill and rapidity with which it was made, with- 

 out a blow, but by simply breaking the sharp edges with the creased bone by 

 the strength of his hands — for the crease merely served to prevent the instru- 

 ment from slipping, affording no leverage — was remarkable." — Reports of Ex- 



