364 Bibliographical Notices. 
thus arising are discussed by M. Boucher de Perthes with clearness 
and elegance, with comprehension of mind, and with the calmness of 
a philosopher and a lover of truth. 
That among the author’s numerous speculations: there should be 
some liable to objection was to be expected. We certainly dissent 
from his novel hypothesis on the subject of Celts, the haches Cel- 
tiques, or haches Gauloises of the French. In addition to the great 
variety of suppositions which have been advanced concerning their 
use, and which he disavows, M. Boucher de Perthes imagines, that 
the Celts both of stone and metal may have been used as weights 
and measures, and may have served as a medium of exchange. 
For more than 150 years the objects called Celts have attracted 
the attention of antiquaries; but whilst they have made extensive 
and very curious collections of spear-heads, arrow-heads, and in- 
struments resembling wedges, chisels or hatchets, which have been 
wrought in stone, and exactly resemble those still used by North 
American Indians, South-Sea Islanders, and other nations in a very 
low state of civilization ; they have until very lately omitted to no- 
tice those implements of still more simple construction, which are 
to be discovered in similar situations. But undoubtedly there were 
such tools, the use of which was adopted in the earlier stages of the 
arts of life. A New-Zealander’s battle-axe, made of hard tough jade, 
polished, and shaped with exact symmetry, could only be produced 
by great labour, skill and perseverance ; and such weapons were 
found by Cook and other navigators to be highly prized by their 
possessors. Many ages before the rude savage could attain to such 
a degree of perfection in the working of stone, he must have in- 
vented easier and simpler methods of operation. If we do but strike 
one nodule of flint against another, we produce fragments with points 
and sharp edges, which only require to be fixed in handles of hollow 
bone or horn in order to be of great service in the fashioning of 
wooden implements of various kinds. Of this class are many of the 
tools which M. Boucher de Perthes has collected, and he has pro- 
duced them in the different stages of manufacture, showing the 
transition from the splinters as they first flew from the block of stone 
to the more exact shapes of spear-heads, arrow-heads, hatchets, chi- 
sels, and other implements. But what were the quadrupeds which 
fell before these weapons? Not the sheep or the goat. It appears 
that they had not yet reached these western borders. But the ele- 
phant, the mastodon, the rhinoceros, the aurochs, and the gigantic 
Irish elk. 
Dr. Mantell, in the first volume of his ‘ Wonders of Geology,’ has 
mentioned various circumstances which show that the last-named 
animal was the contemporary of man. Some further observations, 
which have been made in Ireland, and which tend to establish the 
same fact, have been recorded by Mr. Charlesworth. Professor 
Ansted observes, that the mastodon may possibly have reached down 
almost to the human period * ; and it will be remembered, that, when 
the magnificent and complete skeleton of that animal, now preserved 
* Picturesque Sketches of Creation, p. 301. 
