262 



made also by the Swedish, American, German, and Austrian 

 Arctic expeditions, even now about a million square miles imme- 

 diately round about the North Pole remain unexplored. 



And this brings me to the last subject on which I desire to 

 touch, if I have not already trespassed too much on your time 

 and courtesy. If Professor Boyd-Dawkins' theory be correct, 

 a theory, however, in which the teachings of philology are 

 intentionally ignored, we ought to hold the Eskimo tribes as 

 lingering remnants of the earliest ancient Britons of the so-called 

 Palaeolithic and Mammoth period, who were driven northwards 

 from "Western Europe by the same climatal causes and oscilla- 

 tions of the glacial period which caused the migration of the 

 reindeer and musk-ox towards the Arctic regions. In the 

 Victoria cave near Settle, a very small fragment of a supposed 

 human fibula has been found, which was referred at first indeed 

 to a small species of elephant, but which is now thought to be a 

 relic of our most ancient Northumbrian in the wider meaning 

 of the word, one of those very far removed cousins or ancestors 

 of ours. But Mr. Evans, the highest authority, considers the 

 existence of the " Craven savage" extremely doubtful.* 



I had intended to mention soms results of recent researches in 

 connection with the migrations, settlements, and dwellings of 

 pre-historic Northumbrians. But the limits of an address like 

 the present will not admit of this. On some future occasion, I 

 may be permitted to treat the subject, which is one of increasing 

 interest, in a separate paper with sufficient fulness. Archaeology, 

 though the youngest, is the hand-maid of the oldest of the sciences, 

 History. Where written human records cease to be available, 

 pre-historic Archaeology, investigating the monuments and relics 

 of the primaeval past, relates the story, until then, like Cambus- 

 can's, only " half -told" of a nation's or of the world's childhood. 

 Prom ancient habitations, such as caves, lake-dwellings, cir- 

 cular pits and huts, round towers and underground dwellings ; 

 from burial-tumuli, camps, and terraces, with their associated wea- 

 pons, implements, and ornaments, we derive much trustworthy 



* Presidential Address, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1875, Vol. XXXI., 

 p. lxxiii. 



