280 
or Africa, to the west of Europe, includ- 
ing Britain. We have seen that, during 
this migration, the forms of the weapons 
and tools made from silicious stones had 
become, as it were, stereotyped, and fur- 
ther, that, during the subsequent extended 
period implied by the erosion of the valleys, 
the modifications in the form of the imple- 
ments and the changes in the fauna asso- 
ciated with the men who used them were 
but slight. 
At the close of the period during which 
the valleys were being eroded comes that 
represented by the latest occupation of the 
caves by Paleolithic man, when both in 
Britain and in the south of France the rein- 
deer was abundant; but among the stone 
weapons and implements of that long trog- 
lodytic phase of man’s history not a single 
example with the edge sharpened by grind- 
ing has as yet been found. All that can 
safely be said is that the larger implements 
as well as the larger mammals had _ be- 
come scarcer, that greater power in chip- 
ping flint had been attained, that the arts 
of the engraver and the sculptor had con- 
siderably developed, and that the use of the 
bow had probably been discovered. 
Directly we encounter the relics of the 
Neolithic Period, often, in the case of the 
caves lately mentioned, separated from the 
earlier remains by a thick layer of under- 
lying stalagmite, we find flint hatchets 
polished at the edge and on the surface, cut- 
ting at the broad and not at the narrow end, 
and other forms of implements associated 
with a fauna in all essential respects iden- 
tical with that of the present day. 
Were the makers of these polished weap- 
ons the direct descendants of Paleolithic 
ancestors whose occpation of the country 
was continuous from the days of the old 
river gravels ? or had these long since died 
out, so that after western Europe had for 
ages remained uninhabited it was re- 
peopled in Neolithic times by the immigra- 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. VI. No. 138. 
tion of some new race of men? Was there, 
in fact, a ‘great gulf fixed’ between the 
two occupations? or was there in Europe a 
gradual transition from the one stage of 
culture to the other? 
It has been said that “what song the Sy- 
rens sang, or what name Achilles assumed 
when he hid himself among women, though 
puzzling questions, are not beyond all con- 
jecture;’’ and though the questions now 
proposed may come under the same cate- 
gory,and must await the discovery of many 
more essential facts before they receive defi- 
nite and satisfactory answers, we may, L 
think, throw some light upon them if we 
venture to take a few steps upon the seduc- 
tive if insecure paths of conjecture. So 
far as I know, we have as yet no trust- 
worthy evidence of any transition from the ~ 
one age to the other, and the gulf between 
them remains practically unbridged. We 
can, indeed, hardly name the part of the 
world in which to seek for the cradle of 
Neolithic civilization, though we know that 
traces of what appear to have been a stone- 
using people have been discovered in Egypt, 
and that what must be among the latest of 
the relics of their industry have been as- 
signed to a date some 3,500 to 4,000 years 
before our era. The men of that time had 
attained to the highest degree of skill in 
working flint that has ever been reached. 
Their beautifully made knives and spear- 
heads seem indicative of a culminating 
point reached after long ages of experi- 
ence; but whence these artists in flint came 
or who they were is at present absolutely 
unknown, and their handiworks afford no 
clue to help us in tracing their origin. 
Taking a wider survey, we may say that, 
generally speaking, not only the fauna, but 
the surface configuration of the country 
were, in western Europe at all events, 
much the same at the commencement of 
the Neolithic Period as they are at the 
present day. We have, too, no geological 
