﻿Address. 421 



all conjecture" ; and though the questions now proposed 

 may come under the same category, and must await 

 the discovery of many more essential facts before they 

 receive definite and satisfactory answers, we may, I tliink, 

 throw some light upon them if we venture to take a few 

 steps upon the seductive if insecure paths of conjecture. 

 So far as T know we have as yet no trustworthy evidence 

 of any transition from the one age to the other, and 

 the gulf between them remains practically unbridged. 

 We can, indeed, hardly name the part of the world in 

 which to seek for the cradle of Neolithic civilisation, 

 though we know that traces of what appear to have been 

 a stone-using people have been discovered in Egypt, 

 and that what must be among the latest of the relics 

 of their industry have been assigned to a date some 3,500 

 to 4,000 years before our era. The men of that time had 

 attained to the highest degree of skill in working Hint that 

 has ever been reached. Their beautifully made knives 

 and spear-heads seem indicative of a culminating point 

 reached after long ages of experience ; but whence these 

 artists in flints came or who they were is at present 

 absolutely unknown, and their handiworks afford no clue 

 to help us in tracing their origin. 



Taking a wider survey, we may say that, generally 

 speaking, not only the fauna but the surface configuration of 

 the country were, in Western Europe at all events, much 

 the same at the commencement of the Neolithic Period as 

 they are at the present day. We have, too, no geological 

 indications to aid us in forming any chronological scale. 



The occupation of some of the caves in the south 

 of France seems to have been carried on after the erosion 

 of the neighboring river valleys had ceased, and so far as 

 our knowledge goes these caves offer evidence of being the 

 latest in time of those occupied by man during the 

 Pakieolithic Period. It seems barely possible that, though 

 in the north of Europe there are no distinct signs of such 



