256 TRANSLATIONS AND SELECTED ARTICLES. 
put the antiquaries of the north on the right path: Thus ethnology is: 
for us, what physical geography is to the geologist. For we can 
understand the philosophy of the past of our globe only by first 
studying its present state, and by following the changes which operate 
on its surface, as Lyell, the reformer of geology, has so well taught us. 
Different people have had, in all times, their particular manner of 
fashioning and ornamenting the objects which they made, and they 
have always had their different habits, with which was connected the 
employment of particular objects. This is what constitutes what 
is vulgarly called the fashion, or, to use a more scientific term, 
style. In the north of Europe to the Alps, style or fashion, has 
always been uniform enough for a given period, but has constantly 
varied from one epoch to: the other, precisely as fossil species’ 
haye changed in type from one geological epoch to the other. The’ 
exterior character of an object often permits us to determine its 
age and that of the burial mound to which it belongs, as we 
.can determine the age of a geological stratum by means of a single 
fossil when it is characteristic. In the north of Europe, bronze brace- 
lets were worn during the age of bronze, and during the first age 
of iron; but their style was different, the fashion had changed. 
Thanks to this circumstance, we shall seldom be embarrassed when it i8 
necessary to determine the age of a bronze bracelet, or even a frag- 
ment of such a bracelet. It does not suffice when we make excava- 
tions to gather antiquities to form collections. It is of the greatest 
interest to observe their associations, to determine what are the objects 
which are found together and are consequently of the same date, 
as it is of importance to reunite the fossils of the same strata: 
Taken separately, the latter often might not signify much, whilst 
together they may throw the brightest light on a whole phase of 
the past of our globe. In this view, tombs have a great im» 
portance, for they present collections of objects of the same date, 
without taking into account that the mode of sepulchre itself hag 
varied from one epoch to the other, which again adds to the value of 
the observations. We have seen that the study of tombs has thus 
contributed much to putting the antiquaries of the north on the right 
road. The question of arrangement, so important in geology, is not less 
so as regards the remains of antiquity. The particular grouping of 
objects on the points where they meet, has often a special signification, 
Thus, to return to the tombs, their interior constitution, considered. 
