6 Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain. 



almost every lake in Switzerland, and many freshwater lakes, now 

 filled with bog, in Ireland and other countries, remains of pfhal- 

 bauten and crannoges afford the only history of their ancient and 

 once numerous inhabitants. 



But the objects made of stone, being at once the most ancient and 

 most indestructible, are consequently the most widespread and 

 frequently found of all prehistoric remains. 



In river-valley-gravels along the sea-coast, on the downs and 

 moors, over fields and pastures, beside inland lakes and sea-lochs, 

 these relics are found as if they had been sown broadcast over the 

 land by some fairy hand ; and, indeed, this idea concerning their 

 origin is well expressed by the names they bear of "elf-dart," 

 " thunderbolt," etc. 



It is to the task of describing and classifying these curious stone 

 relics that Mr. John Evans has devoted the past twenty years, and 

 now comes forward with the grand work on the Ancient Stone 

 Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain, which we 

 have taken as the subject for our article. 



We may perhaps be thought by some to attach too great an im- 

 portance to these researches ; but when it is borne in mind that even 

 now attempts are frequently being made by superstitious and pre- 

 judiced persons to throw doubt and discredit on such investigations, 

 and even to endeavour to prove that the very evidence upon which 

 they are based is false and illusory, we cannot but express our 

 sincere gratification on finding all the needful facts and arguments 

 brought together for refuting such heretical fanatics. 



It seems essential, then, in order clearly to understand the uses 

 and mode of fabrication of the ancient stone-implements found in 

 Britain, to follow the same inductive method of reasoning as that 

 pursued by the geologist, who, in attempting to account for the vast 

 changes which have taken place in the crust of the earth, finds it 

 safest to refer them to ascertained chemical laws and to the existing 

 operations of nature. These relics of antiquity can, in fact, only be 

 interpreted by reference to the uses and methods of manufacture 

 employed by existing savages in what we may judge to be a some- 

 what similar state of barbarism. 



The accounts of Torquemada, Hernandez and Clavigero, explain 

 the manufacture of obsidian flakes by the Mexican Indians, which, 

 with the knowledge we possess of the manufacture of gunflints at 

 the present day, enables us perfectly to realize the mode in which 

 our prehistoric ancestors in Britain fabricated their precisely similar 

 implements in the Stone Age. 



The records of Belcher, Catlin, Schoolcraft, Baines, and numerous 

 other travellers among the North American Indians, the Esquimaux, 

 the native Australian, New Zealander, New Caledonian, and South 

 Sea Islanders, furnish abundant descriptions of the manufacture of 

 arrow-heads, and the mode of making, hafting, and using the various 

 forms of stone-implements corresponding with many found in this 

 country. 



"The name of Celt (says Mr. Evans), which has lon^been giveu 



