2 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. i. 



plants pass over the field of vision, each connected with 

 that which preceded it, and each becoming more and 

 more highly organised, until man appears the last born 

 as well as the highest and the noblest creature in the 

 realm of geology. 



The archaeologists in the meanwhile have raised the 

 study of antiquities to the rank of a science by the use 

 of a purely inductive method, and have accumulated 

 materials which enable us to establish a tolerably complete 

 sequence of events from the remote past in which man 

 stands in the geological foreground down to the borders 

 of history. To them we owe the knowledge of the steps by 

 which man slowly freed himself from the bondage of the 

 natural conditions under which all other creatures live ; 

 of the successive discoveries of the use of polished stone, 

 bronze, and iron ; of the domestication of animals ; of 

 the cultivation of the fruits of the earth ; of the ' intro- 

 duction of the arts ; in a word, of all those things by 

 which man has become what the historian finds him. 



The writers of history Freeman, Green, Stubbs, 

 Guest, and others have carefully sifted the true from 

 the false, the certain from the uncertain, in the records 

 of this country, and have consolidated, so to speak, their 

 domain, so that it can be used by the archaeologist as a 

 base for the conquest of what lies beyond. If, however, 

 in this respect, archaeology be indebted to historical 

 criticism, she is now in a position to repay the debt with 

 ample interest. In the pages of the historian, man 

 appears in the high state of civilisation marked by the 

 use of letters, and the written record is silent as to his 

 progress up to that point. The steps by which that 

 civilisation was achieved are pointed out by prehistoric 

 archaeology, and these are traced back until man is 



