Sept. 4, 1884] 



NATURE 



449 



the Iroquois stock. Much as Canada has changed since then, 

 we can still study among the settled Iroquois the type of a race 

 lately in the Stone Age, still trace remnants and records of their 

 peculiar social institutions, and still hear spoken their language 

 of strange vocabulary and unfamiliar structure. Peculiar im- 

 portance is given to Canadian anthropology by the presence of 

 such local American types of man, representatives of a stage of 

 culture long passed away in Europe. Nor does this by any 

 means oust from the Canadian mind the interest of the ordinary 

 problems of European anthropology. The complex succession 

 of races which make up the pedigree of the modern Englishman 

 and Frenchman, where the descendants perhaps of palaeolithic, 

 and certainly of neolithic, man have blended with invading 

 Keltic, Roman, Teutonic-Scandinavian peoples — all this is the 

 inheritance of settlers in America as much as of their kinsfolk 

 who have stayed in Europe. In the present scientific visit of 

 the Old to the New World, I propose to touch on some pro- 

 minent questions of anthropology with special reference to their 

 American aspects. Inasmuch as in an introductory address the 

 p actice of the Association tends to make arguments unanswer- 

 able, it will be desirable for me to suggest rather than dogmatise, 

 leaving the detailed treatment of the topics raised to come in the 

 more specialised papers and discussions which form the current 

 business of the Section. 



The term prehistoric, invaluable to anthropologists since Prof. 

 Daniel Wilson introduced it more than thirty years ago, stretches 

 back from times just outside the range of written history 

 into the remotest ages where human remains or relics, or other 

 more indirect evidence, justifies the opinion that man existed. 

 Far back in these prehistoric peri >ds, the problem of Quaternary 

 man turns on the presence of his rude stone implements in the 

 drift gravels and in eaves, associated with the remains of what 

 may be called for shortness the mammoth-fauna. Not to re- 

 capitulate details which have been set down in a hundred books, 

 the point to be insisted on is how, in the experience of those 

 who, like myself, have followed them since the time of Boucher 

 de Perthes, the effect of a quarter of a century's research and 

 criticism has been to give Quaternary man a more and more real 

 position. The clumsy flint pick and its contemporary mammoth- 

 tooth have become stock articles in museums, and every year 

 adds new localities %vhere palaeolithic implements are found of 

 the types catalogued years ago by Evans, and in beds agreeing 

 with the sections drawn years ago by Prestwich. It is generally 

 admitted that about the close of the Glacial period savage man 

 killed the huge mailed elephants, or fled from the great lions and 

 tigers, on what was then forest-clad valley-bottom, in ages before 

 the later waterflow had cut out the present wide valleys 50 or 

 100 feet or more lower, leaving the remains of the ancient drift- 

 beds exposed high on what are now the slopes. To fix our ideas 

 on the picture of an actual locality, we may fancy ourselves 

 standing with Mr. Spurrell on the old sandy beach of the Thames 

 near Crayford, 35 feet above where the river now flows two 

 miles away in the valley. Here we are on the very workshop- 

 floor where palaeolithic mm sat chipping at the blocks of flint 

 which had fallen out of the chalk cliff above his head. There 

 lie the broken remains of his blocks, the flint chips he knocked 

 off, and which can be fitted back into their places, the striking- 

 stones with which the flaking was done ; and with these the 

 splintered bones of mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, possibly 

 remains of meals. Moreover, as if to point the contrast between 

 the rude palaeolithic man who worked these coarse blocks, and 

 apparently never troubled himself to seek for better material, the 

 modern visitor sees within fifty yards of the spot the bottle-shaped 

 pits dug out in later ages by neolithic man through the soil to a 

 depth in the chalk where a layer of good workable flint supplied 

 him w ith the material for his neat flakes and trimly-chipped 

 arrow-heads. The evidence of caverns such as those of 1 levon- 

 shire and Perigord, with their revelations of early European life 

 and art, has been supplemented by many new explorations, with- 

 out shaking the conclusion arrived at as to the age known as the 

 reindeer period of the northern half of Europe, when the mam- 

 moth and cave-bear and their contemporary mammals had not 

 yet disappeared, but the close of the Glacial period was merging 

 into the times when in England and France savages hunted the 

 reindeer for food as the Arctic tribes of America do still. Human 

 remains of these early periods are still scarce and unsatisfactory 

 for determining race-types. Among the latest finds is part of a 

 skull from the loess, at Podbaba, near Prague, with prominent 

 brow-ridges, though less remarkable in this way than the cele- 

 brated Neanderthal skull. It remains the prevailing opinion of 



anatomists that these very ancient skulls are not apt to show 

 extreme lowness of type, but to be higher in the scale than, for 

 instance, the Tasmanian. The evidence increases as to the wide 

 range of palaeolithic man. He extended far into Asia, where his 

 characteristic rude stone implements are plentifully found in the 

 caves of Syria and the foot-hills of Madras. The question which 

 this Section may have especial means of dealing with is whether 

 man likewise inhabited America with the great extinct animals of 

 the Quaternary period, if not even earlier. 



Among the statements brought forward as to this subject, a 

 few are mere fictions, while others, though entirely genuine, are 

 surrounded with doubts, making it difficult to use them for 

 anthropological purposes. We shall not discuss the sandalled 

 human giants, whose footprints, 20 inches long, are declared to 

 have been found with the footprints of mammoths, among whom 

 they walked, at Carson, Nevada. There is something pictur- 

 esque in the idea of a man in a past geological period finding on 

 the Pampas the body of a glyptodon, scooping out its flesh, 

 setting up its carapace on the ground like a monstrous dish-cover, 

 and digging himself a burrow to live in underneath this animal 

 roof ; but geologists have not accepted the account. Even in the 

 case of so well-known an explorer as the late Dr. Lund, opinions 

 are still divided as to whether his human skulls 110m the caves 

 of Brazil are really contemporary with the bones of megathe- 

 rium and the fossil horse. One of the latest judgments has been 

 favourable : Quatrefages not only looks upon the cave-skulls as 

 of high antiquity, but regards their owners as representing 

 the ancestors of the living Indians. The high and narrow 

 dimensions of the ancient and modern skulls are given in the 

 "Crania Ethnica," and whatever a similarity of proportions 

 between them may prove, it certainly exists. Dr. Koch's cele- 

 brated flint arrow-head, recorded to have been found under the 

 leg-bones of a mastodon in Missouri, is still to be seen, and has 

 all the appearance of a modern Indian weapon, which raises 

 doubt of its being really of the mastodon period. This ante- 

 cedent improbability of remote geological age is felt still more 

 strongly to attach to the stone pestles and mortars, &c. , brought 

 forward by Mr. J. D. Whitney, of the California Geological 

 Survey, as found by miners in the gold-bearing gravels. On the 

 one hand, these elaborate articles of stone-work are the very 

 characteristic objects of the Indian graves of the district, and 

 on the other the theory that the auriferous gravels capped by 

 lava-flows are of Tertiary age is absolutely denied by geologists 

 such as M. Jules Marcou in his article on "The Geology of 

 California" (Bull. Soc. Giol. de Fiance, 1SS3). It is to be 

 hoped that the Section may have the opportunity of discussing 

 Dr. C. C. Abbott's implements from Trenton, New Jersey. 

 The turtle-back celts, as they are called from their flat and con- 

 vex sides, are rudely chipped from pebbles of the hard argillite 

 out of the boulder-bed, but the question is as to the position of 

 the sand and gravel in which they are found in the bluffs high 

 above the present Delaware River. The first opinion come to, 

 that the makers of the implements inhabited America not merely 

 after but during the great Ice Age, has been modified by further 

 examination, especially by the report of Mr. H. Carvill Lewis, 

 who considers the implement-bearing bed not to have been de- 

 posited by a river which flowed over the top of the boulder-bed, 

 but that, at a later period than this would involve, the Delaware 

 had cut a channel through the boulder-bed, and that a subse- 

 quent glacier-flood threw down sand and gravel in this cutting 

 at a considerable height above the existing river, burying therein 

 the rude stone implements of an Esquimaux race then inhabiting 

 the country. Belt, Wilson, and Putnam have written on this 

 question, which I will not pursue further, except by pointing 

 out that the evidence from the bluffs of the Delaware must not 

 betaken by itself, but in connection with that from the terraces 

 high above the James River, near Richmond, where Mr. C. M. 

 Wallace has likewise reported the finding of rude stone instru- 

 ments, to which must be added other finds from Guanajuato, Rio 

 Juchipila, and other Mexican localities. 



This leads at once into the interesting argument how far any 

 existing people are the descendants and representatives of man 

 of the Post-Glacial period. The problem whether the present 

 Esquimaux are such a remnant of an early race is one which 

 Prof. Boyd Dawkins has long worked at, and will, I trust, bring 

 forward with full detail in this appropriate place. Since he 

 stated this view in his work on "Cave-Hunting," it has con- 

 tinually been cited, whether by way of affirmation or denial, but 

 always with that gain to the subject which arises from a theory 

 based on distinct facts. May I take occasion here to mention 



