Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain. 5 



In order therefore to complete this continuity of life on the earth 

 it seemed necessary to obtain some further evidences of man's early 

 existence, in addition to that which history or tradition supplied. 

 This evidence was forthcoming. The deposits furnishing it belong 

 to the latest period of our planet's history preceding the present 

 and have been classed by geologists as Quaternary ; but they show 

 more clearly perhaps than any other their continuity with our own 

 epoch, interrupted only by the effects of those cosmical and meteoric 

 agencies which are ever slowly changing the surface of our earth in 

 vast cycles of time. 



These earliest known evidences of man only reveal to us the 

 primeval savage in his rudest and most uncivilized state ; but our 

 ideas of primitive man, as derived from history or tradition, re- 

 present him as a highly civilized being endowed with superior in- 

 telligence and high moral attributes. 



Such qualifications however would have been of little avail, even 

 under the most favoured conditions of climate, as compared with 

 those possessed by the simplest aborigines ; nor could they have 

 been transmitted to his descendants : for, however intelligent his mind 

 may have been, he had no experience in the manufacture of, nor was 

 he provided with, the simplest inventions of civilized life. 



It would indeed be an anomaly to find a people possessing high 

 social, moral and intellectual qualities without having made the least 

 progress in the useful arts, the civilizing influences of which tend to 

 raise mankind above the level of the savage. 



Whatever view, then, may be adopted in regard to the first man, 

 we must all agree that his immediate descendants were unacquainted 

 with metals — a knowledge of which was only acquired after 

 many generations ; and consequently that their weapons would be 

 made of the simplest forms, and from the most easily fabricated 

 materials, but often well suited to the purposes for which they were 

 required. 



These comprised weapons of the chase, for fishing, for canoe- 

 making, for the formation of rude habitations and garments, and, 

 lastly, those used in primitive agriculture. 



We can readily divine the materials out of which these would be 

 formed, by recalling the achievements of our schoolboy days ; and, 

 truly, in this sense 



" The child 's the father of the man " — 



Stones, wood, shells, horns and bones of animals, — such were the 

 simple materials made use of by early man. 



But the more fragile articles, in wood, shell, hom and bone, could 

 only be preserved in a few rare situations, which offered sufficient 

 protection to such perishable relics from the destructive effects of 

 the atmospheric agents ever busy on or near the surface of the 

 ground. Tlius, in a few isolated districts, caverns have been ex- 

 plored, beneath whose ^talagmitic floors have been discovered remains 

 which have made us acquainted with much of the rude arts of these 

 prehistoric people ; and not a few early graves have been ransacked 

 for a similar purpose ; whilst, strange to say, beneath the waters of 



