284 LETTER FROM CHEV. W. JERVIS, F.G.S. 



he had found on Monta Gargano (Foggia). He drew and described 

 them as prehistoric implements, ascribing uses to each type of 

 form. He said that they coukl be picked up there everywhere 

 with a careful search. I saw nothing in them but natu^rally frac- 

 tured chert, or a variety of flint so abundant in the compact 

 Cretaceous limestone. I consider all these Eolithic objects to be 

 exclusively natural forms. I myself picked up a piece of obsidian 

 in the island of Lipari so like a knife or other cutting implement 

 that I was long tempted to forget that I could have freighted a ship 

 with obsidian at that spot. A flint of like shape I found at Lan- 

 grune, in Normandy, of mere accidental form. Enthusiasts too 

 ■often look to mere form. Many 'palaeolithic objects ' were never 

 handled by archsean man. 



" The more interesting and reliable papers on ancient races in 

 Western Asia, Australia, and Oceania seem to point plainly to the 

 decadence rather than to the progress of man in certain parts of 

 the woi'ld. They may yet afford similar materials for research to 

 Nineveh and Troy. I have not ever seen stress laid on the impulse 

 which poioer and toealth, as also commerce, had given to the develop- 

 ment of artistic or well-formed objects. What inducements have 

 poor, defenceless I'aces, without commerce, to spend their time in 

 learning the useful arts ? The riches of Greece, Rome, etc., en- 

 couraged and paid skilful ai'tisans. I received at the Royal Indus- 

 trial Museum, as a gift of King Humbert, a most remarkable 

 collection of toys, made in Calabria by the semi- barbarous natives. 

 It is ethnographically invaluable. You might well take it to be 

 pre-Roman, were you not to recognise an object evidently intended 

 to be the maker's conception of a railway locomotive. What 

 diffei'ent workmanship at commercial Naples ? In all times, I 

 presume, there must have been rude objects contemporaneous with 

 the finest works of art and industry. 



" I am, my dear Sir, 



" Yours faithfully, 



" W. Jervis." 



