182 ADDRESS. [LECT. 



on platforms supported on piles driven into the muddy 

 bottom of the lakes, and in some cases still further 

 supported by having stones heaped up round them. In 

 one case a large canoe has been met with, evidently 

 wrecked while on its way to one of the lake settle- 

 ments, loaded with a freight of such stones. It must 

 be admitted indeed that our knowledge of the Stone 

 Age is still scanty, fragmentary, and unsatisfactory ; on 

 the other hand, the stone weapons and implements found 

 in Europe so very closely resemble those in use amongst 

 various races of existing savages that they give us vivid, 

 and I think to a great extent, accurate ideas of the mode 

 of life which prevailed at that distant period ; distant 

 indeed it was, according to the ideas of chronology which 

 almost universally prevailed until within the last quarter 

 of a century, for we can scarcely doubt that even the 

 later Stone Age goes back to a period more remote than 

 the 6,000 years which were traditionally supposed to be 

 the limit of man's existence on earth. No doubt, indeed, 

 the difficulties of the received chronology had long been 

 felt. Well-marked varieties of the human race are 

 shown by the Egyptian monuments to have existed as 

 early, at any rate, as the fifteenth century before Christ. 

 The antiquity of Man is also indicated by the differences 

 of language, and by the existence of powerful and 

 flourishing monarchs at a very early period ; for the 

 pyramids themselves were constructed about 4,000 years 

 B.C., and even at that early period it would appear that 

 the Sphinx was suffering from age, for we possess a 

 decree by which Cheops provided for its repair. 



Quitting now the Neolithic, or second Stone Age, we 

 come to the Palaeolithic or first Stone Age. At this 



