688 JADE TOOLS IN SWITZERLAND. 



LETTER 2. 



Jan. 2, i88o. 



Your correspondent Mr. H. M. Westropp is slow to take a well- 

 meant hint such as the one with which I ended my letter published 

 by you on December 25. 



1. The views which he ascribes to M. Desor, it is true M. Desor 

 did once hold, but he repudiated them at the International Con- 

 gress of Anthropologists and Archaeologists which met at Brussels 

 in 1872. Here are his old and his new views, as given in the 

 ' Comptes Rendus' of that Congress, published in 1873. Speaking 

 of 'the wild hypothesis' of the importation of jade into Switzer- 

 land, M. Desor, p. ^^2, says : — ' Pour ma part, je n'ai pu admettre 

 une hypothese aussi pen vraisemblable, et pendant longtemps j'ai 

 pense avec M. de Mortillet que ces roches devaient se trouver dans 

 les Alpes memes. Mais voici tantot vingt ans que nous cherchons 

 sans rien decouvrir.' A page and a little more follows; and on 

 p. ^^^, M. Desor sums up his altered view thus : — ' Ma conclu- 

 sion que j'^mets k defaut d'autres, est done celle-ci; ces roches^ vu 

 leur petit nombre, vu leur admirable etat de conservation, sont 

 des reliques des temps les plus anciens ; elles ont ete apportees 

 d'Orient par les premiers colons qui ont succede aux peuplades 

 de la pierre taillee.' 



2. Mr. Westropp asks me to account for the presence of jade axes 

 in Ireland ; but I do not know that any have ever been found there, 

 though there is no reason why they should not, except the reason 

 which explains their absence from Denmark and Sweden and which 

 I leave your readers to divine. I say I do not know of any jade 

 hatchets having been found in Ireland; neither did Sir Thomas 

 Wilde, if we may judge from his ^ Catalogue of the Antiquities of 

 the Royal Irish Academy,' p. 39, 1857. 



3. Sir John Lubbock's words in ' Prehistoric Times,' 4th ed. 

 p. 82, are : — ' Though, perhaps, it would not yet be safe to conclude 

 that these jade axes were introduced, from the East, no European 

 locality for jade or jadeite has yet been discovered ; and it is per- 

 fectly possible they may have passed from hand to hand and from 

 tribe to tribe by a sort of barter.' 



4. I cannot verify the second reference made to Sir John 



