104 
NALURE, 
have had no means of producing fire before their acquaint- 
ance with Europeans, but to have only carried lighted 
brands from place to place. Sir John Lubbock, however, 
is now able to give (p. 440) a drawing of a Tasmanian 
fire-drill. It is just like the well- 
known instrument of Australia, 
Africa, and America. 
So again, in a less degree, with 
those rude stone menhirs, crom- 
lechs, kistvaens, &c., which are 
classed under the head of Mega- 
lithic monuments. The range over 
which these interesting structures are found has been 
continually extending to new districts. Dr. Hooker’s 
account, in his Himalayan Journals, of the modern setting 
up of Megalithic structures by indigenous tribes in ‘India, 
received for years little notice, but has now become one of 
the leading facts of prehistoric archeology. As may 
MEGALITHIC STRUCTURES IN INDIA. 
especially be seen in Meadows Taylor’s recent paper in 
the Journal of the Ethnological Society, monuments like 
our own Kit’s Coty House, or Dance Main, are known 
in vast numbers in India, and are made the subject of 
careful study. A group from the reduced plate in Sir 
John Lubbock’s work (p. 120) is given here. 
Was the civilisation of the lower races spread from a 
single centre, or from many? Is the correspondence of 
savage culture the result of common inheritance, or 
independent similar invention? This still most obscure 
problem is intimately connected with the evidence brought 
forward in Sir John Lubbock’s generalisations, and 
especially with his details of modern savage tribes as 
representatives of older strata of prehistoric man. The 
point is one which especially strikes those who notice 
the surprising similarity of the implements of the lower 
races inthe most different regions, as where, in the present 
work, three all but identical arrow-heads from modern 
North and South America and ancient France, are set 
side by side (p. 99); or modern savage flint scrapers are 
figured, undistinguishable from those of remote European 
antiquity. Sir John Lubbock insists with much force 
(p. 545) on the consideration that this similarity is due 
especially to similarity of materials ; that the pointed bones 
used for awls are necessarily similar everywhere, that 
obsidian knives from Mexico are like the flint knives of 
our own country, not so much because the ancient Briton 
resembled the Aztec, as because the fracture of flint is 
like that of obsidian. And his remark (p. 121), that any 
child with a box of bricks will build dolmens and triliths 
TASMANIAN FIRE DRILL, 
| is a highly reasonable protest against those antiquaries 
who interpret the similarity of Megalithic structures in 
different districts as proof that their builders were of 
kindred race. 
With regard to a most interesting topic treated of by Sir 
John Lubbock, that of the existence of savage tribes desti- 
tute of religion, lam disposed to entertain a view 
different from his. To a great extent, indeed, 
our difference is rather nominal than real. He 
adopts a definition of religion more stringent 
than I do, and thus excludes from the cata- 
logue of religious tribes many which on the 
same evidence I should include. Dieffenbach’s 
evidence, for instance, is quoted as follows (p. 
556): “If we take religion in its common 
meaning, as a definable system of certain 
dogmas and prescriptions, the New Zealanders 
have no religion. Their belief in the super- 
natural is confined to the action and influence 
of spirits on the destiny of men, mixed up with 
fables and traditions.” This, from my point 
of view, is an admission that the New Zea- 
landers have a religion; and, indeed, we know 
that they are strong believers in a future exist- 
ence,and regard the names of their ancestors as 
| tutelary spirits. Moreover, the assertions of travellers on 
this point not seldom break down on closer scrutiny. Thus 
mention is made here of a statement in the Voyage de 
l’ Astrolabe that the Samoans have no religion ; but the 
explorers’ information was evidently insufficient, and an 
elaborate account of the 
Samoan deities, priests, 
temples, prayers, sacri- 
fices, may be found in 
Turner’s “Polynesia.” 
Among SirJohn Lubbock’s 
list of evidence there are, 
indeed, cases which can- 
not be thus easily met. 
But while admitting theo- 
retically that a state with- 
out religion may have pre- 
vailed among early tribes 
of men, and may still be 
represented by surviving 
savages, I fail to find as 
yet any indisputable case. 
Among the special points ot interest introduced in the 
present volume, it may be mentioned that the habitations 
men lived in during the Bronze Age are displayed in a 
TERRA-COTTA URN FROM ALBANO 
very interesting way, in imitative terra-cotta urns of the 
[Mov. 25, 1869 
“ard 
