COMPETITION. 113 



land, etc., has been, and is being, transmitted to us 

 from generation to generation, and that we at the 

 present time are recipients of the accumulations 

 amassed by the restless intellectual activity of our 

 direct and indirect ancestors. We cannot, therefore, 

 determine whether we are increasing in our intel- 

 lectual activity by the amount of knowledge we pos- 

 sess, and we must seek some other evidence. 



Equally valueless would be a comparison between 

 the intellectual activity of the Greeks or Romans and 

 ourselves, taking as a test say the number of dis- 

 tinguished writers per million of population ; for the 

 Greek and Roman people are not related to us in 

 direct line of descent, but are remote cousins. We 

 can, however, obtain information which is of the 

 greatest value as to the intellectual power of our 

 direct forefathers at dates which may be counted back 

 by thousands of years. Although they have left no 

 written records behind them for writing, even at the 

 later part of the period referred to, was a rough im- 

 plement, and placed in the hands of very few yet 

 they have left behind them, buried in their sepulchral 

 mounds, their skulls, silent witnesses of the power and 

 activity of the minds that once inhabited them. 



The Neolithic compared with the Modern English Skulls. 



The skull is the bony covering to the brain and 

 the great organs of sense placed in the head ; it 



