Oct, 26, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



443 



of paper*, Hectuce*, etc* 



LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE ANTIQUARIAN 



SOCIETY. 

 On October 6th the members of this Society visited the 

 Geological Museum at Owens College, where they were 

 addressed by Professor Boyd Dawkins, who said he 

 wished to take the opportunity of pointing out the method 

 of arrangement which had been adopted in the section 

 of the museum which represented the history of the 

 Tertiary world and its inhabitants, and which was the 

 only portion of the museum which concerned them as 

 students of the ancient history of man. At Ihe first out- 

 look they might fancy that the subject of archaeology 

 had no place whatever in a natural history museum. It 

 seemed to him that the question was one which re- 

 quired some explanation. It was answered, in his own 

 case at all events, by practical experience. He had found, 

 in the course of his inquiry into the history of the 

 earth, in dealing with the Tertiary period, that it is ab- 

 solutely impossible to keep the history of man out of the 

 later periods of the geological record. He had, there- 

 fore, been compelled to organise a portion of the museum 

 in which man found himself recorded in his first coming 

 on the earth, and also in various stages of progress in 

 which he is represented by the implements which are 

 found in various strata. Further than that, when he came 

 to inquire into the history of the rocks themselves, he 

 found that there were strata belonging to the period in- 

 cluded in history. For that reason he had been com- 

 pelled not only to deal with Palaeolithic man as 

 a fossil, and as truly a fossil as the Pleistocene mammals 

 by which he was surrounded, but also to place in the 

 museum a small collection of implements, ornaments, 

 and weapons and other articles representing the state of 

 civilisation in the Historic Period. Such then was his 

 justification for putting anything of the nature of archaeo- 

 logical specimens into the Tertiary section. He put 

 them there because they form part of the ancient history 

 of the earth. The Tertiary division of the history of the 

 earth begins with the Eocene and ends with the Tertiary 

 period, and the successive stages are marked by the 

 various collections on the east side of the first floor of 

 the museum. Drawing their attention to a few of the 

 most important points which concerned them as students 

 of the ancient condition of man, he referred to a group 

 of animals and shells and a quantity of flint splinters 

 found on the banks of the ancient Thames, at Crayford, 

 in the neighbourhood of London, when the river wended 

 its way on the one hand into Essex and on the other 

 hand into Kent. Those bones and other materials gave 

 them a picture of the life of the times. When they saw 

 the tusks of elephants, the remains of the Irish elk, the 

 bison, the ox, and other animals, all lying side by side, 

 and when they saw along with them splinters of flints 

 which have been struck off in the manufacture of flint 

 instruments, they observed at once the surroundings 

 under which man first of all made his appearance in 

 Britain in the Pleistocene age. They would notice a 

 small group of river shells in this period, among which 

 was one species (Corbicula flumiualis) now only to be 

 found in the Nile and other rivers of the South and the 

 Eajt. Next they came to the Palaeolithic instruments of 

 the' river gravels, representing a primeval condition out 



of which mankind has been removed for incalculable 

 ages. When he told them those instruments were found 

 over the greater part of this country, the whole of 

 France, over the whole of the borders of the Mediter- 

 ranean, in Africa and in Europe, and Palestine, and 

 when, further, exactly that type of instrument occurs 

 also in India, he thought they would realise the interest 

 which centres in implements which imply the same rude 

 condition of barbarism over the whole of Europe west 

 of the Rhine, over the whole of the Mediterranean 

 region, as well as in the jungles and forests of India. 

 Then came next the period of the Cave-Men. In the 

 caverns were found the bones of the horse, the rhinoce- 

 ros, the reindeer, the hippopotamus, all brought in by 

 the hyenas ; and in association with them were to be 

 found a whole series of remains proving the existence 

 of man in Yorkshire, Somerset, and Devonshire. Among 

 these remains was the picture of a horse engraved on a 

 polished bit of bone, which might be looked upon as the 

 very earliest specimen of art which they had found in 

 Britain. There were also photographs and sketches and 

 casts of engravings and sculptures from the ioreign 

 caves. In the prehistoric period they would see an 

 excellent collection of polished stone axes from Greece, 

 about which he was amused to read a short lime ago, 

 that none had ever been found in that part of the world. 

 Those that were in the museum were collected by Mr. 

 Finlay, a well-known resident in Athens. There was also 

 a collection of things from Switzerland, which proved that 

 the arts of spinning and weaving, of husbandry, and of 

 pottery making were introduced into Europe in the 

 Neolithic age. They would also see evidence of the 

 introduction of the domestic animals, the sheep, goats, 

 pigs, oxen, horses and dogs, all coming in with the 

 primeval Neolithic farmer. In another part of the case 

 they would see proof that the Neolithic peoples were ac- 

 quainted with the art of mining, in a collection which he 

 had obtained from an ancient flint mine in Sussex. Not 

 only that, but they would see a few human skeletons of 

 the people who introduced these arts into Europe, the 

 people who are living to this day in the shape of the 

 small dark Welsh, the Irish, and the small dark High- 

 lander. He might say further that some cf those people 

 are to be found now in Yorkshire, in Derbyshire, and 

 he had no doubt that the blood of those people might be 

 found in the veins of some of those around him that 

 afternoon. The remainder of these are found in the 

 alluvia in the deposits of the ancient rivers, and in the 

 peat bogs, as well as in tombs. Going a stage further, 

 they came to the Bronze age, in which were to be found 

 samples of the domestic animals. There was a very 

 curious thing to be noted in the group of human skulls 

 found along with them. Some two years ago Mr. H. D. 

 Pochin, a well-known resident of Salford, asked him 

 (Professor Dawkins) to undertake the exploration of a 

 cavern called Gop, crowning a hill south of the Vale of 

 Clywdd. In a sepulchral cavern close by they found a 

 stone chamber full of human remains. The skulls were 

 of the long type belonging to the small dark Neolithic race 

 he had referred to,but there was one skull which belonged 

 to the conquering race who introduced bronze into this 

 country, and who were distinguishable from the Celt, 

 being altogether a bigger and stouter race than the small 

 dark Welsh. So that they had two distinct types asso- 

 ciated together in the sepulchre belonging to the Bronze 

 age. They had also other examples of the Bronze 

 age. He took this opportunity of calling the attention 



