378 SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OF CONCHOLOGY. 



ancient Ireland. The skulls and bones of tlie Bos longifrons, tell in 

 Britain of relics pertaining to an era not later than the Eoman times; 

 and the ornamented tusks of the Wild Boar, the bones of the Brown 

 Bear, the teeth and skulls of the Beaver (^Castor UuropcBus,) the 

 carvings wrought from the Walrus ivory, the skates formed from the 

 metatarsal and metacarpal bones of the Bed Deer and small native 

 Horse ; vrith numerous kindred relics of palaeontology vi-ithin the 

 era of the occupation of the British Islands by man : all serve to 

 assign approximate dates to the examples of his ancient arts which 

 they accompany. Thus within the historic period, as in geological 

 eras prior to the creation of man, the progress of time is recorded by 

 the extinction of races. His advent on our earth was speedily 

 marked by the disappearance of numerous groups of ancient life 

 which pertain to that transition era where geology closes and archae- 

 ology begins. So also the intrusion of the Boman into Britain is 

 recorded in the extinction of many of its ancient fauna ; even as the 

 progress of the European colonist of the New World inevitably in- 

 volves not only the disappearance of the wild animals which haunt 

 its forests, but also of the Aborigines who made of them a prey. 



But while the remains of extinct species thus serve — like the 

 graven Boman or runic inscriptions on the sepulchral slab, — to fix 

 the dates at which certain eras had their close, other accompanying 

 objects, and chiefly the traces of living or extinct fauna, are no less 

 valuable as fixing the geographical origin of the colonists of ancient 

 areas, amid whose relics they are found ; just as the elephants, the 

 camels, the monkeys, and baboons, of the Nimrod Obelisk, or the 

 corresponding sculptures on the walls of Memphis or Luxor : serve 

 to indicate the countries whence tribute was brought, or captives 

 were carried ofli", to aggrandise the Assyrian or Egyptian conquerors. 

 Among such relics, which serve to fix the geographical centres of 

 ancient arts^ the sources of early commerce, or the birth-places of 

 migrating races, might be noted the tin and amber of the Old, and 

 the copper of the New World. So also in minuter analysis, we re- 

 cognise among primitive American relics the local origin of various 

 favourite materials : as the Mexican obsidian, the clay slate of the 

 Babeens, and the favourite red pipe-stone of the Couteau des prairies. 

 But it is to a more widely diflFused and greatly varied class of natural 

 products that I now refer, alike in their bearings on the chronologi- 

 cal and geographical relations of ancient and living races, and on 



