THE STONE AGE PAST AND PRESENT. 227 



slaughtering tlie beast on the yearly sacrifice to Gimawong, 

 not with a knife, but with a sharp stone. ^ 



The examination of the evidence bearing on the Stone Age 

 thus brings into view two leading facts. In the first place, 

 within the limits of the Stone Age itself, an unmistakable 

 upward development in the course of ages is to be discerned, 

 in the traces of an early period when stone implements were 

 only used in their rude chipped state, and were never ground 

 or polished, followed by a later period when grinding came to 

 be applied to improve such stone instruments as required it. 

 And in the second place, a body of evidence from every great 

 district of the habitable globe uniformly tends to prove, that 

 where man is found using metal for his tools and weapons, 

 either his ancestors or the former occupants of the soil, if there 

 were any, once made shift with stone. It would be well to 

 have the evidence fuller from some parts of the world, as from 

 Southern Asia and Central Africa, but we need not expect 

 from thence anything but confirmation of what is already 

 known. 



^ A passage in Klemm, C. Ot., vol. iv. p. 91, relating to a Circassian practice of 

 sacrificing with a "thunderbolt," arises from a misunderstanding. See J. S. Bell, 

 ' Circassia,' vol. ii. pp. 96, 108. 



Q 2 



