STONE IMPLEMENTS, ETC., IN THE DORSET MUSEUM. 35 



what we learn from the orange " haches " of the Palaeolithic folk, 

 unnamed, unstoried, under the dark shroud of millenniums. We 

 study Neolithic implements, and in some dim degree we thereby 

 learn about the state of .our forerunners in these parts two, three, 

 or four thousand years ago. We study Palaeolithic implements, 

 and, it seems to me, some at least among antiquarian writers think 

 that they glean information about the Palaeolithic folk in these 

 parts in like degree. In like degree, if I do not mistake them. 

 On consideration, however, it is in a very different and a much less 

 degree. Suppose a parallel case. Suppose that in 3,000 to 

 5,000 years hence India shall have sunk 600 feet. The antiquaries 

 of that time will search hut-sites and graves of Ghonds, Lushais, 

 Veddahs, in the Ghauts, Neilgherries, Adams' Peak, and other 

 islands then representing India and Ceylon. Eude enough imple- 

 ments they will find signs of rude enough life. Will they be 

 right in saying that such were the appliances, such the life, in 

 India of the far back nineteenth and earlier centuries ? Of course 

 not. Why the whole amazing architectural and other art of India 

 would be ignored. No word, no dimmest hint, of the vast stone 

 Cingalese reservoir dykes, of the dome of Beejapore, of the gemmy 

 inlay of the Taj, compared to which all corresponding European 

 work is a clumsy bungle. No word of the rock-hewn architecture 

 of Karli, to which Europe hardly affords even the poorest parallel. 

 And remember that such submergence of the Palaeolithic regions 

 has come to pass, as Dawson and other eminent geologists point 

 out. Let us then bear in mind that these cleverly fashioned 

 Hawkchurch flint implements are the work, most likely, not of 

 the advanced Palaeolithic folks, but of the rough hillmen of that 

 epoch. What the best work was, who shall tell 1 Encrusted with 

 serpulae, matted with algae, it lies on the deep down sea bed 

 anywhere within the wide-stretching hundred-fathom line. 



