﻿514 Frof. Milne — Across Europe and Asia. 



mil. The length is, I believe, 71 mil. In the centre of this a hole 

 has been bored, which, from its conical shape, looks as if it had been 

 rymed out by means of a flake of flint.' Bound the diameter of this, 

 circular bands have been deeply scratched. Another curiously- 

 shaped article is spheroidal in form, the two diameters being re- 

 spectively 45 and 58 mil. Upon it, as upon the cylindrical body 

 which has been just described, there are bands of circles traversing 

 its surface in different directions. The use of these articles does not 

 appear to be known. They were found in clay at about the depth 

 of 2|- metres, and were accompanied by shells like Pupa. Helix, and 

 Succinea, indicating freshwater and terrestrial conditions. In ad- 

 dition to these I also saw many other relics of bygone times. 

 Amongst these there were many gouge-shaped stone chisels, like 

 those which are dug up in Japan, Newfoundland, and many parts 

 of North America. These, I believe, were used to dress skins with 

 in a manner similar to that in which a Micmac now performs the 

 same operation with a knife. There were also some teeth of 

 Cervus elapJius, which had holes bored through them, bones of 

 Equns caballus and Bison prisciis. From the comparison of these 

 beds with others also in the vicinity of the town, where the remains 

 of the Mammoth have been found, Mr. Tschersky, their "discoverer 

 and describer, appears to think that they in all probability belong to 

 a Middle Stone period. 



Besides those animals which I have just mentioned, others, which 

 are conspicuous amongst the list of European Pleistocene mammalia, 

 have also been found in the vicinity of Irkutsk. Thus we have 

 Elephas primigenius, Bhinoceros tichorhinus, Equus caballus, Cervus 

 tarandus, Cervus elaplius, Cervus capreolus, and very many others. 



Prof. Boyd Dawkins shows that the Palgeolithic cave-dwellers of 

 Europe have a blood relation with the Eskimos of North America, a 

 view which is chiefly founded on the fact that these two races, which 

 are now removed so far by both space and time, apparently used the 

 same set of implements, a condition which at the present day only 

 exists between blood-related tribes. The Musk-sheep and Reindeer 

 which now give food to the Eskimo, having also furnished food to 

 the early cave-dwellers, strengthens the idea, — and it was as these 

 animals retreated from Europe across Asia towards the north-east, 

 that man retreated also. The bones of these animals, as Mr. Boyd 

 Dawkins tells iis, together with those that I mentioned, mark the 

 line of this retreat across Siberia. The flint implements that I found 

 upon the Kan, together with others of like kind from neighbouring 

 localities, tell us that certain implement-forming minerals were 

 everywhere sought out and utilized by primitive Man, who, chipping 

 them into weapons at each convenient resting-place, has thereby 

 left his spoor. If this migration is a fact, and it seems, when all 

 the evidence is considered, to be probable enough, then it may be 

 correlated with those periods of great cold to which I have already 

 several times referred. 



1 The specimens are figured by Mr. Tschersky, who has also described them in the 

 Proceedings of the Geographical Society of Irkutsk, Sept. 18th, 1872. 



