206 



NATURE 



{JvJy II, 1872 



EVANS'S STONE EM ELEMENTS OF GREAT 

 BRET A IN* 



WHEN Shakespeare represented his philosophical 

 Duke, as finding " sermons in stones," and " books 

 in the running brooks," he was but unconsciously ex- 

 hibiting the prophetic faculty which has been attributed 

 to all true poets. He could hardly have foreseen that 

 his pretty ytt fanciful conceit would one day be found to 

 be sober earnest. I'ut so it is ; we ha\'e here a goodly 

 volume of more than six hundred pages, illustrated by 

 nearly as many excellent woodcuts, discoursing learnedly 

 of nothing save stones and streams, and finding in them 

 sermons of great and, to many readers, novel interest. 



Celts, Santon Di 



, SUFFOLIC 



It might have been supposed, when Mr. Evans had 

 published his well-known work on '• The Coins of the 

 Ancient Britons," that he had gone back as far as pos- 

 sible in the history of our land and nation ; but in archa> 

 ological as in other sciences, there is in the lowest known 

 depth one lower still remaining to be fathomed ; every 

 chamber opened to the light discloses others lying beyond 

 it. From a ]5CopIe who had no literature, or none of 

 which they have left any trace beyond the rude characters 

 inscribed on their rude coins, we are now carried back to 



* " The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great 

 Britain." By John Evans, F K.S., F.S.A. (London: Longmans and Co., 

 1873.) 



tribes and races which possessed neither coins nor letters ; 

 people who have left us neither their sepulchres nor their 

 ashes, nor indeed any trace of their existence, save the 

 rude triangular or subtriangular fragments of worked 

 stone which served them for tools or weapons ; and even 

 these are usually found buried beneath the wreck and 

 ruin, it may be, of continents or islands which have long 

 since been worn and wasted away. 



The publication of this work is remarkable as an evi- 

 dence of the quickened pace which characterises scientific 

 research in our days. Paleontology and Geology, vigorous 

 and flourishing as they are, are still hardly " out of their 

 'teens ;" but Prehistoric Archaeology has made compara- 

 tively more rapid progress than cither. Not more than 

 fourteen years have passed since the discoveries made by 

 Boucher de Perthes of flint implements in the gravel beds 

 of Abbeville and Amiens, although at that time discredited 

 and disparaged by the geologists of his own country, were 

 confirmed and supplemented by Mr. Prestwich and Mr. 

 Evans. Previously to that time these objects had attracted 

 but little notice ; the things were " neither rich nor rare ;" 

 men looked at them and wondered, and then forgot them, 

 just as before William Smith's time they gazed with a 

 profitless curiosity on fossil shells and bones, and thought 

 with Dr. Martin Lister, that they might be "the efforts of 

 some plastic power, in the earth, being the regular work- 

 ings of Nature, whereby she sometimes seems to sport and 

 play, and make little flourishes and imitations of things, 

 to set off and embellish her more useful structures." 



But since the discoveries in the Somme X^alley were 

 recognised, a flood of light has been shed upon the sub- 

 ject. These dry bones live, and these rude stones are 

 found to be useful, indeed indispensable, miterials for 

 building up the earliest history of the human race. The 

 savans of every country in Europe have hastened to take 

 part in an inquiry so novel and so interesting ; many 

 volumes of memoirs have been written ; our French neigh- 

 bours, with their usual vivacity, have established a journal 

 devoted to Prehistoric Archieology, as well as an annual 

 Coiii^i'cs ; and these researches having been for several 

 years conducted by so many able and eager observers, 

 we need not wonder that Mr. Evans, having studied the 

 whole bibliography of the subject both ancient and 

 modern, and explored every considerable museum or col- 

 lection, is now enabled to produce this Encyclop;\idia of 

 the new-born science, which for want of a better word 

 may, perhaps, be called Petrology or Petro-tomology. He 

 has introduced us into the workshops and armouries of 

 our most remote predecessors, it may be of our ancestors, 

 as they existed not at any particular epoch, but in all 

 probability through a long succession of ages ; and he has 

 shown us so clearly what were their weapons and tools, 

 of which any vestiges remain, and how they were made 

 and used ; and has correlated them so accurately, as far 

 as might be, with similar objects found in all quarters of 

 the globe, as well as with those described by classical 

 writers, or in use by modern savages, that in reading his 

 work we know not which most to admire, the industry 

 shown in the collection and examination of such a vast 

 amount of material, or the skill with which the informa- 



