NATURE 



May 27, 1880] 



figure of it is taken from Mr. John Evans's "Ancient Stone 

 Implements." 



The author carefully considers, as far as the evidence 

 will permit, the question of the range of the Cave men as 

 compared with the River-drift men. The remains of the 

 " Cave men," who are characterised by the use of certain 

 peculiar implements, are found throughout the whole of 

 France, and are remarkably abundant in the caverns of 

 the Pyrenees. They occur also in Switzerland, Germany, 

 Belgium, and England, but are limited in range, bemg 

 unknown as yet in the caves south of the Alps and 

 Pyrenees, and north of a line passing east and west from 

 Derbyshire through Belgium. The Cave men differed m 

 race from the River-dnft men. They, were ignorant of 

 pottery, but they had a varied assortment of miplements 

 and weapons of bone, ivory, and stone. They prized 

 ornaments, and in the cave at Duruthy forty canine teeth 

 of the bear and the lion were found perforated to form a 

 necklace, " a magnificent trophy of the chase." 



The Cave men were also artists, and engraved drawings 

 of very considerable artistic merit on bones, ivory, and 

 antlers. Their drawings of the mammoth on its own 

 ivory are familiarly kno\^n. We reproduce here a figure 

 of a reindeer incised on an antler from the Kesserloch, 

 near Thaynigen. 



Drawings of the great Irish elk, bisons, the ibex, 

 and bears have also been discovered, but those of 



man are extremely rare, and comparatively badly exe- 

 cuted. Mr. John Evans is inclined to hold that the River- 

 drift and Cave men belonged to the same age and the 

 same race, but the author concludes that they must be 

 referred either to two distinct races or to two sections of 

 the same race which found their way into Europe at 

 widely different times ; the River-drift men being of far 

 higher antiquity in Europe, and probably having lived 

 for countless generations before the arrival of the Cave 

 men and the appearance of higher culture. " The dis- 

 coveries of the last twenty years have tended to confirm 

 the identification of the Cave men with the Eskimos." 



The account of the Cave men is followed by that of 

 the prehistoric period, of the neolithic civilisation, the 

 age of polished stone implements and of the prehistoric 

 farmer and herdsman. Wild boars, the great wild ox, the 

 urus, the Irish elk, the reindeer, the brown and grizzly bear 

 still inhabited Britain during that period. The Irish elk 

 is remarkable for being the sole survivor amongst land 

 mammalia from the pleistocene to the prehistoric age 

 which has since become extinct. Its rarity in Britain 

 forms a marked contrast with its abundance in Ireland. 

 It has been found in England, near Newbury in Berk- 

 shire, and at Maybole in Ayrshire. In the neolithic period 

 the dog, horse, sheep, goat, shorthorn, and hog were 

 already domesticated. 



" Of all the neolithic implements the axe was by far 



scklace Lake, Wilts, 



the most important. It was by the axe that man achieved 

 his greatest victory over nature, by clearing the land of 

 forest. It was immeasurably superior to the rude flint 

 hdche of the palEeolithic hunter, which could not make 

 a straight cut in wood, and which was very generally 

 intended for use in the hand, without a handle. It is 

 therefore chosen as the symbol of the neolithic culture." 



In New Guinea and its neighbourhood land is still 

 cleared of forest by the natives for culture by the aid of 

 fire and the stone hatchet. 



Chapter X. treats of the further development of culture, 

 the Bronze age, and the invasion of the British Isles by 

 the Celts, who are proved by their tombs, scattered over 

 the face of the country, alike in England, Scotland, Wales, 

 and Ireland, to have conquered nearly every part of the 

 British Isles. In the Bronze age the number and variety 

 of the weapons, implements, and ornaments belonging to 

 the men of the period become greatly increased, and 

 their culture presents a far more complicated problem for 

 study than that of their simpler predecessors. Mr. John 

 Evans, who, as the highest authority on early bronzes, is 

 followed by the author, divides the Bronze age into two 

 periods — the Early and the Late ; the first of these was a 

 period of transition, when the use of bronze was super- 

 seding that of stone, and is characterised by the presence 

 of bronze daggers and plain wedge-shaped axes, originally 

 modelled from stone prototypes. The later division of the 

 Bronze age is characterised by the appearance of swords, 

 spears, palstaves, and socketed celts. Already in the 



early Bronze age such articles of advanced development 

 as tweezers and combs of bone, amber and glass beads, 

 jet buttons, and bronze finger-rings and ear-rings were in 

 use. The accompanying woodcut represents an amber 

 necklace of the Bronze period found at Lake, in Wilt- 

 shire. Even gold is found amongst the remains of this 



"We cannot follow the author in his account of the 

 temples of the Bronze age, Avebury and Stonehenge, nor 



Uit, Tipperary. 



in his description of the methods by which the bronze 

 was worked, of the artistic designs of the period, and ot 

 the curious hoards of bronze merchandise which have 

 been found in France, and the pick of which bas, we 

 believe, found its way into Mr. John Evans hoard. I he 

 twelfth chapter deals with the prehistoric iron age north 

 of the Alps, the arms and equipage, personal ornaments, 

 late Celtic art, Etruscan influence on art, &c. Arts in 



