New Zealanders, aboriginal Americans, Eskimo, and others, are fast 

 following' in their wake, and this all in a comparatively short space of 

 time. There is undoubtedly now a far greater physical and mental 

 interval between the Hottentot woman and such men as Gladstone and 

 Darwin than between the Hottentot and an ape. It is a fact beyond 

 -dispute that man was not in such a high state of development ages 

 gone by as at present. The earliest traces of man exhibit him to us in 

 the Palaeolithic, or old stone, age, as wild and living in caves, using 

 only the rudest stone implements with which to battle with the ferocious 

 monsters around him. His jaw was then prognathous, like the ape, 

 and his body large and powerful. 



In the limestone caverns of France have been discovered the fossil 

 remains of men who inhabited caves and belonged to the Palaeolithic, 

 or early Pleistocene, period. Together with these troglodytes, or cave- 

 dwellers, were rough, unpolished stone implements and weapons, 

 denoting a low state of civilisation. Other caves, in later strata, give 

 us lighter stone weapons, of better finish, and occasionally horn dart- 

 points, such as would be used for catching smaller game. Numbers 

 of skin-scrapers also were found, suggesting the idea that the people 

 used the hides of animals for clothing, instead of going naked, as their 

 ancestors. The hairy character of the body would be probably giving 

 place to a finer, smoother, and more delicate outer skin, which would 

 necessitate clothing of some kind. Still later we find implements 

 altogether of flint, lancet-shaped, admirably-proportioned, and of three 

 sizes, adapted for arrow, javeline, and lance points respectively, and 

 designed to be fitted to wooden and bone shafts. After these appear 

 arrows and darts of deer's horn and bone, and stone and flint tools, 

 which were used for making these arrows. We also find such imple- 

 ments as bone awls and needles for piercing and sewing skins, arrow- 

 heads furnished with barbs on each side, and harpoons barbed on one 

 side only. 



Now was man's intellect fairly on the swing ; but still he was, as 

 yet, only in the Palaeolithic period, for not one polished implement nor 

 fragment of pottery is found in their stations. They were surrounded 

 by ferocious carnivora, which sometimes fell victims to their weapons. 

 The mammoth still tenanted the valleys, and the reindeer was the 

 common article of food. They were hunters, possessed of the rudest 

 modes of existence, and with but little of what is now called civilisation. 



In Britain the troglodyte man was contemporary with the mammoth, 



