270 Notices of Memoirs — 



neiglibouring vallej'-s, both in England and France, and in the caves 

 of limestone districts, where similar conditions existed. The subse- 

 quent decrease of the river, leaving its terraced margins of gravel 

 and loam, and the ultimate coating of peat over the marshy flats 

 bordering its now narrow channel, complete the history of the 

 changes down to the historic period. In these later river-deposits, 

 and in the peat-bogs, implements of polished stone, of bronze, and 

 of iron, are found to have been successively deposited ; but in the 

 older gravels and associated loams, whether in the valleys or in the 

 caves, stone implements (shaped only by chipping) are found, and, 

 as the oldest kind, have given the name "Palaeolithic" to their 

 period ; whilst the subsequent age, when man had got the habit of 

 sharpening his weapons of stone by grinding, is termed " Neolithic." 

 The great lapse of time required to complete the formation of the 

 Danish peat-bogs, in which implements of iron, bronze, and polished 

 stone are successively accompanied by the beech of the present 

 period, the older oak, and the still more ancient fir tree, belonging 

 to three changes of conditions, and of the associated animal life, 

 was next dwelt upon. An account of the Swiss lake-dwellings, or 

 pile-villages, was then given ; and the indications of successive 

 generations or peoples, using iron, bronze, and polished stone tools, 

 in more or less distinct gradations, were pointed out. Those using 

 implements of stone were not altogether uncivilized ; and yet, if 

 the incomplete evidence of geographical changes be accepted, they 

 lived some 6000 years before the Roman conquest of Western 

 Europe. They did not possess the reindeer, though that animal had 

 been hunted near by in earlier times by cave-dwellers (Canton 

 Schaffhausen), and in France; and then the climate must have been 

 cold enough for its existence so far south, and cold enough for the 

 habitation of rock-shelters on sunny slopes, where during the 

 jDresent summers of France, even for the stench-bearing Esquimaux 

 to abide, with the heaps of garbage, stinking flesh and bones, would 

 have been impossible ; but there, the hunters of the reindeer, horse, 

 and musk-ox, did live, using chipped flint tools, and knowing not 

 how to grind and polish them — ^though they used some kinds of 

 grindstones in preparing food and paint, and were artistically in- 

 clined. They cleverly engraved outlines of animals and other things 

 on bone, ivory, and stone, with pointed flints, and shaped bone and 

 ivory into handles of poniards and quaint statuettes. Among their 

 drawings is a lively figure of the hairy high-fronted elephant 

 (Mammoth), which they therefore must have seen, and which 

 ranged over the colder regions of the western hemisphere. The 

 long and unknown space of time requisite for the change of climate 

 from Arctic conditions in South France and Switzerland to warmer 

 winters and hotter summers, unfavourable to the existence of mam- 

 moth, reindeer, and musk-ox, divided the cave-dwellers, using 

 chipped flakes, from the lake-dwellers, using polished stone imple- 

 ments. These cave-folk of Dordogne and elsewhere, however, were 

 by no means the oldest inhabitants of caves. They lived at or near 

 the level of existing rivers ; but there are caves containing relics of 



