﻿420 Canadian Record of Science. 



ments and the changes in the fauna associated with 

 the men who used them were but slight. 



At the close of the period during which the valleys 

 were being eroded comes that represented by the latest 

 occupation of the caves by Pahtolithic man, when both in 

 Britain and in the south of France the reindeer was 

 abundant ; but among the stone weapons and implements 

 of that long troglodytic phase of man's history not a 

 single example with the edge sharpened by grinding has 

 as yet been found. All that can safely be said is that the 

 larger implements as well as the larger mammals had 

 become scarcer, that greater power in chipping flint ha5 

 been attained, that the arts of the engraver and the 

 sculptor had considerably developed, and that the use of 

 the bow had probably been discovered. 



Directly we encounter the relics of the Neolithic 

 Period, often, in the case of the caves lately mentioned, 

 separated from the earlier remains by a thick layer of 

 underlying stalagmite, we And flint hatchets polished 

 at tlie edo-e and on the surface, cuttincj at the broad and 

 not at the narrow end, and other forms of implements 

 associated with a fauna in all essential respects identical 

 with that of the present day. 



Were the makers of these polished weapons the direct 

 descendants of Palaeolithic ancestors whose occupation of. 

 the country was continuous from the days of the old 

 river gravels ? or had these long since died out, so that 

 after Western Europe had for ages remained uninhabited, 

 it was re-peopled in Neolithic times by the immigration of 

 some new race of men ? Was there, in fact, " a great 

 gulf fixed" between the two occupations ? or was there 

 in Europe a gradual transition from the one stage of 

 culture to the other ? 



It has been said that " what song the Syrens sang, 

 or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself 

 among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond 



