130 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



habitually reversed, right and left, looking toward a central line or 

 point. Nevertheless the evidence of righthandedness is manifest. 

 But the discoveries of recent years in the caves of the Dordogne, in 

 Southern France ; and subsequently in Belgium, Switzerland, and 

 England, have familiarised us with drawings of vastly greater anti- 

 quity than the earliest examples of Egyptian art. 



Two sources of evidence in reference to the dexterity of the men 

 of prehistoric times can now be appealed to : 1st. Their flint imple- 

 ments, so abvindant, and so widely diflfused ; and 2nd. The carvings 

 and drawings of palaeolithic man. Of those earliest traces of man's 

 handiwork, the implements of the River-drift Period are at once the 

 rudest and most primitive in character. They occur in vast numbers, 

 among the rolled gravel of the ancient fresh-water, or river-drifts, 

 which belong to what has received from the included implements the 

 name of the Palceolithic Period ; and if they are correctly assumed 

 to represent the sole appliances of the man of the Drift Period, they 

 indicate a singularly rude stage. In reality, however, the large? 

 rude almond and tongue-shaped implements of flint are nearly 

 imperishable ; while trimmed flakes, small daggers or arrow heads, 

 and other delicately fashioned flint implements — as well as any made 

 of more perishable materials, such as shell, wood, or bone, — must have 

 been fractured in the violence to which the rolled gravels were sub- 

 jected, or would perish by natural decay. Nevertheless the Drift 

 Folk and the primitive Troglodytes of Europe have transmitted 

 examples of their industry and skill in sufficient number to enable 

 us to turn them to account for the present purpose. Their mode of 

 working is now well understood ; for the process of the ancient 

 arrow-maker is no lost art. It has been in use among many barbar- 

 ous races : and is still practised by some of the Indian tribes of this 

 continent, to whom it has doubtless been transmitted through suc- 

 cessive generations from remote times. The modes of manufacture 

 vary somewhat among different tribes : but they have been repeatedly 

 witnessed and described by explorers who have watched the native 

 arrow-maker at work ; and his operations no longer present the 

 difficulties which were long supposed to beset them. Among the 

 rarer primitive implements are hammer-stones, oblong or rounded in 

 shape, most generally with cavities worked in two faces, so as to 

 admit of their being conveniently held between the finger and thumb. 

 Implements of this class have been repeatedly recovered from the 



