CONCLUSION. 549 



lation is both ingenious and plausible, but it will hardly stand a 

 close analysis. It conies mainly to this, that rude savage 

 peoples living under similar cold climatic conditions and associ- 

 ated with the same animals will necessarily support life in much 

 the same way. Their implements will be few and simple, and 

 the form of such implements as harpoons, spears, marrow-spoons, 

 and scrapers, hardly admits of much variety. If certain Eskimo 

 harpoons are identical with some of Palaeolithic age, the coinci- 

 dence is not startling. The habit of sculpturing animals, etc., 

 upon their implements is certainly remarkable, but what else 

 have they to engrave upon ? And the art of drawing figures is 

 not confined to the Eskimo among rude unsophisticated tribes. 

 The small-handled dagger referred to by Mr. Dawkins does not 

 seem to prove much. If many such had been discovered this 

 might have induced a belief that the people who fashioned them 

 were of diminutive size ; but one specimen only seems too slight 

 a foundation upon which to build such a theory. The weapon 

 in question may have been fashioned for or by a young lad, or 

 it may have been merely an ornamental weapon, intended more 

 for show than use. The other points of agreement mentioned 

 by Mr. Dawkins, namely absence of pottery, crushing of bones, 

 and accumulation of the dlbris, are neither strange nor unex- 

 pected. It would be difficult to make and still more difficult to 

 preserve coarse pottery in an arctic climate, and I have some- 

 times thought that this may be partly the reason why potsherds 

 seem to be wanting in the accumulations of the so-called 

 Eeindeer period. As for the crushing of bones and the heaping 

 up of the debris, these are practices not peculiar to the Eskimo 

 among modern savages, nor were they confined to Palaeolithic 

 man amongst the prehistoric races of Europe. Lastly, the 

 Eskimo may be careless enough about their dead relatives, 

 but there is no proof that such was the case with the Palseo- 



have been fashioned by one and the same race. "Were such isolated and unim- 

 portant correspondences to guide us in classifying living races, we might find 

 ourselves establishing ethnical affinities between peoples who really belong to the 

 most diverse stocks. 



