j 2th December, igo/. 



Sir Otto Jaffe, LL.D., in the Chair. 



" DEVELOPMENT OF CELTIC ART. 

 By Mr. R. A. Dawson. 



{Abstract). 



Mr. Dawson, in the course of an interesting lecture, said the 

 "finds" made from time to time and classified in our various 

 museums taught them to know all the movements of early man, 

 and to know how the various races spread themselves over 

 the earth. Of the earliest races they had no remains of habitations. 

 The first inhabitants probably lived in caves or in huts or tents 

 made from the branches of trees placed together. Their earliest 

 tools were of rough chipped stone, at first used in the hands, and 

 afterwards lashed by twigs and grasses to the handles, broken 

 from the branches of trees. The race to which the early 

 people belonged were called the Iberian race, and some authori- 

 ties had derived the name Ireland from that name. By Celtic art 

 they meant the art of the people who spoke the Celtic language. 

 These people belonged to the Aryan group of nations, and came 

 from the same cradle of the race, in Central Asia, as did the 

 ancestors of the Greeks, Italians, Teutons, Slavs, Armenians, and 

 Persians. They appeared to have entered Europe and passed up 

 the Valley of the Danube into North Italy and Switzerland, where 

 they formed important settlements. Many classical writers men- 

 tioned the Celtic people, and all were agreed as to their charac- 

 teristics. Looking back to the Celts on their way to Ireland, two 

 important centres had been discovered, the earlier one at Hals- 

 stadt, near Salzburg, in Austria, discovered in 1846, and the latter 



