382 SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OF CONCHOLOGY. 



it appeared evident, o their being strung to form necklaces ; and a 

 vegetable fibre, serving tbis purpose, was also discovered, a portion 

 of wbicb was tbrougb the shell." Alongside of these also lay a 

 knife, or arrowhead, of flint, and a small fibula of bone, but no traces 

 of metallurgic arts. 



Sir Thomas Browne has remarked in one of his quaint, beautiful 

 fancies : " Time conferreth a dignity upon the most trifling thing 

 that resisteth his power ;" and as the uses to which the primitive 

 British savage applied the commonest and least attractive of the 

 shells of his Island coasts, for the purposes of personal adornment, 

 confer an interest on them for us, as illustrations of the universal 

 prevalence of certain innate ideas which may almost be characterised 

 as instincts in man : so too may we discover, even in the rudest 

 traces of primeval culinary arts, some glimpses of forgotten truths, 

 that .will help to illuminate the past history of the human race. 

 Amid the widening clearings of this new continent, where the natural 

 forest still bounds our horizon, and the rude Indian savage who once 

 found in it his free hunting-grounds, has not yet entirely disappeared 

 from our midst, it requires no great stretch of imagination to picture 

 to our own minds what the researches of the archaeologist have dis- 

 closed relative to Europe's primeval human era. Erom evidence of 

 a very varied kind, for example, it has been deduced, that, many 

 ages prior to the earliest authentic historical notices, the British 

 islands were occupied by a human population, even more imperfectly 

 furnished with the means of coping with the difficulties and priva- 

 tions of savage life than the rude tribes of our north-western wilds. 

 Nor was it man alone that then existed in a savage state. Searching 

 amid the records of that debateable land to which the geologist and 

 the antiquary lay equal claim, we learn that vast areas of the British 

 islands were covered at that remote era mth the primitive forest ; 

 that oaks of giant height abounded where now the barren heath and 

 peat-bog cumber the land ; and that even at a period recent, when 

 compared with that primeval era, the fierce Caledonian bull, the 

 wolf, and the wild boar, asserted their right to the old forest glades. 

 The scanty human population was thinly scattered along the skirts 

 of this continuous range of forest, occupying the coasts and river 

 valleys, and retreating only to the heights, or the dark recesses of 

 the forest, when the fortunes of war compelled them to give way 

 before some more numerous or warlike rival tribe. Thus confined 



