JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 85 
regarding the primitive man, his use of stone and flint imple- 
ments, adding to the foregoing, ‘‘ It will be unnecessary to 
‘““ dwell upon the characteristics of the first race of men known 
‘‘to us, they were rude and uncivilized, confessedly men and 
“in mo respect akin to apes.’’ Where can you find here 
any confirmation of the belief that man once fell from a state 
of civilization to barbarism, and losing the knowledge acquired 
of metal implements and their manufacture became such 
utterly degenerated savages as to be only able to fashion 
_ stones, flints, etc., into weapons for war and the chase? The 
view thus expressed has been so completely refuted that 
neither on this continent, in Europe, or elsewhere can it be for 
a moment entertained by any individual possessing even a 
rudimentary acquaintance with either anthropology or geology. 
The tendency of the race has been upward, not downward, 
and when one of the most brilliant men of the age, Archbishop 
Whately, of Dublin, endeavored to prove that savage races 
are fallen descendants of more civilized people, thanks to Sir 
John Lubbock, Tyler and others, the defeat he met was so 
crushing as to compel every leading scientist in the United 
Kingdom to oppose the view as altogether untenable. 
In a former paper I referred to discoveries in Egypt of 
primitive workshops containing stone and flint implements 
which from their positions completely disproved the assertion 
that such things were unknown there, that this country at 
least displayed from the earliest pre-historic times a high 
degree of civilization, and that it never had a Stone Age. A 
friend a short time ago forwarded an account of recent excava- 
tions in the tombs and temples of Egypt, undertaken for the 
British Museum by the famous archeologist, Dr. Flinders 
Petrie. ‘This extract has been mislaid, but it asserted that 
the most convincing proof had been obtained that the Stone, 
Bronze and Iron Ages were unquestionably shown to have 
existed there, as in every other part of the old world, where 
the history of the human race has been properly examined by 
men uninfluenced by ancient traditions. The graves discovered 
in Upper Egypt by Dr. Morgan and others at Abydos and 
