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RELIQUIAE 



III. PART III. MISCELLANEOUS: ART ETC. 



(1) Possible Variations in Form of Implements. In a Letter dated September 

 28, 1868, Dr. Robert Brown, E.L.S., E.R.G.S., remarks : 



"A savage is capable of improving his implements, even though his house, his dress, and his customs 

 remain unaltered. In Greenland you find, in the old graves, the harpoon-holder with a hole for the thumb, 

 instead of, as now, only a depression on the edge ; and when civilization first reached them they had adopted 

 this improvement, showing that it was the effect of an idea not introduced from foreign sources, but wrought 

 out by themselves. This is of some importance, as it shows that a savage is capable of a certain degree of 

 improvement from within, though the generally accepted theory is that the impulse must come from vnihout. 

 If, therefore, you should find among the Cave-men's tools some which seem improvements upon those of a 

 preceding age, we must not hastily conclude that they belong to a different people. 



"A people may go back in civilization ; and the rude tools found need not have been the first efforts of a 

 people, nor the more polished ones the later. Some months ago, when in the Museum of Ethnology at 

 Copenhagen, the eminent Conservator, Kammerherre Carl Steinhauer, pointed out to me a beautifully formed 

 Chinese musical instrument, and another from Borneo, rudely made after the same design. The Chinese 

 who emigrated to Borneo had fallen back in civilization, but still retained the remembrance of an art prac- 

 tised in their mother country, though without the skill to fashion an instrument as beautiful as the original ; 

 and the rude instrument shown me was the result of this. Now, if it had been found in tombs, or in a 

 place where no history attached to it, we should have said that it was the first effort of a savage race, and 

 that the other was the advanced work: on the contrary, the rude instrument dates after the finished, being 

 the result of a retrograde civilization " *. 



(2) Art of the Cave-folk of Perigord. In the ' Proceedings of the Literary and 

 Philosophical Society of Manchester,' vol. xiv. no. 10, 1875, pp. 113-116, Mr. 

 ARTHUR W. WATERS, E.G.S., reviews Prof. ALBERT HEIM'S Memoir on the Con- 

 tents of the Kesslerloch at Thaingen, near Schaffhausen, and says (p. 116): 



" Prof. Heim also argues that the preponderance of animals [in the engraved figures illustrated in LAETET 

 and CHRISTY'S ' RELIQULE AQTTITANIC^; '] looking to the left over those looking to the right indicates a proba- 

 bility that the artists drew with the right hand. He concludes by saying, ' the race of zoo-artists were 

 in their talents in advance of the means which were at their disposal. In the late races (for example, the 

 Pile-dwellers) the intellectual capacity and the resources in the midst of which the men grew up are more 

 nearly balanced.' He also says 'that this was a premature attempt of the human genius, and that no 

 partial inconsistent cultivation of a single talent can be maintained for a long period.' This last remark 

 does not seem to be borne out, since the similarity of the Esquimaux and Palaeolithic Man is undoubted, 

 and would rather make us consider how persistent a low civilization may remain when there are few 

 extraneous modifying circumstances." 



* Thus giving rise to one class of "survivals." EDITOE. 



