38 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



gladlyer fleshe of men, than other, men saye to us 

 that beyonde that yle is an yle where are greater 

 giaunts as xlv or 1 fote long, & some said 1 cubits 

 long (75 feet) but I saw them not, and among those 

 giaunts are great shepe, and they beare great wolle, 

 these shepe have I sene many times." 



EARLY MEN. 



On the antiquity of man it is impossible to speculate, 

 because we have no data to go upon. We know that 

 his earliest existence, of which we have any cognisance, 

 must have been at a period when the climate and fauna 

 of the Western continent was totally different to their 

 present state. Then roamed over the land, the elephant, 

 rhinoceros, hippopotamus, the Bos-primigenius, the rein- 

 deer, the cave bear, the brown and the Arctic bears, 

 the cave hyaena, and many other animals now quite 

 extinct. We know that man then existed, because we 

 find his handiwork in the shape of manufactured flint 

 implements, mixed with the bones of these animals 

 and, occasionally, with them human remains have been 

 found, but, as yet, no perfect skull has been found. 

 There were two types of man, the Dolicho Cephalous, 

 or long-headed, and the Brachy Cephalous, or round- 

 headed and, of these, the long-headed were of far 

 greater antiquity. 



All we can do is to classify man's habitation of this 

 earth, as well as we can, under certain well-defined, and 

 known conditions. Thus, that called the Stone Age, 

 must be divided into two parts, that of the roughly 

 chipped flint implements which is designated the 

 Palaeolithic period and that of the polished and care- 



