41 



and use of these articles were next referred to. These were : — 

 i. Bone caverns, the earliest of which — the Kirkdale Cave — was 

 brought under notice by Dr. Buckland in 1823. French physiolo- 

 gists followed in their notices of such caverns, and in 1836 M. 

 Boucher de Perthes brought under the view of his countrymen 

 several facts which appeared to give an antiquity to the human 

 race far beyond what had been before calculated. M. Milne 

 Edwards, in 1861, followed in the same line of observation, and at 

 the present day the discovery of manufactured stone implements, and 

 even of human remains in the drift, all tended to prove the exist- 

 ence of a race long previously to the historic era. 2. Lacustrine 

 or lake dwellings, similar to the Cranogues of Ireland, were another 

 source of information. Those in the Lake of Zurich were among 

 the most remarkable — discovered by Professor Keller in 1853. 



3. Sepulchral monuments — not Celtic nor Druidical — had been 

 discovered, evidently belonging to the same pre-historic race. 



4. The kitchen middens, canoes, and fishing implements, but lately 

 examined closely, were also of this period. Dr. MTlwaine pro- 

 ceeded to generalise the facts thus brought to light by modern 

 discovery and research, and to indicate the deductions which 

 might be, with safety, made from them. These were as fol- 

 low : — 1. The existence of a race extensively spread - t and almost 

 identical in habits and customs, and which is to be known and 

 identified only by such remains. 2. This race must have been of 

 vast antiquity, and literally pre-historic. They possessed neither 

 bard nor Druid, and consequently no historian. It would seem, 

 however, that they professed no religion, as no remains indi- 

 cative of worship, of any kind, had been discovered in connexion 

 with it. The antiquity of this race might, to some extent, be de- 

 termined by the fact that no human remains whatever had been 

 found lower down in the geological strata than in the Quaternary 

 formation. The precise period of the drift was, even among geolo- 

 gists themselves, a question of very difficult solution. The age of 

 this pre-historic race, however, must have been of vast antiquity. 

 The Homeric period, which seemed to have features in common 

 between the bronze and stone periods, was 962 b.c. The Celtic 



