66o 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Dec. 28, 18S8. 



as improbable, even wetter than at present. The next 

 or reindeer period was characterised by the fact that 

 people made weapons of much more delicate and varied 

 types. At this period the reindeer lived abundantly in 

 this country, though now it had emigrated far to the 

 north. The climate, as they might well imagine, was 

 probably colder then than at present, and they found that 

 the men of that period exhibited greater skill in the 

 making of weapons. They made stone implements 

 which were very carefully and often delicately fashioned, 

 and were of a much more varied type. Amongst the 

 instruments made there was a much greater variety of 

 type than in the older palaeolithic time. They found that 

 with flakes of flint they carved various articles like 

 needles and harpoons out of pieces of bone, and they 

 even attempted art, for ornaments and drawings were 

 actually found in some cases which were made by these 

 people. But, nevertheless, they were very primitive 

 people indeed, for it was very clear that amongst them 

 pottery was quite unknown, and they seemed to have 

 had no dogs or other domestic animals. In their mode 

 of burial, evidence was obtained that superstition, the 

 mother of religion, as it had been called, existed, and, 

 as they found with the bones of early people who had been 

 buried, the axes, and treasures that belonged to them, 

 they might infer that they had some idea of the future 

 life in which those objects would be of use to them. There 

 was also an indication that human sacrifices were offered 

 in these periods, for in many cases the number of bodies 

 laid round a central one, would seem to indicate that 

 slaves and attendants were slaughtered to serve as at- 

 tendants to them in another world, as was the case with 

 savages in the present day. Most of them were hunters, 

 and they were probably more skilful men than those of 

 the palaeolithic time, and there was evidence that they 

 were not cannibals. Even a greater time seemed to 

 separate these palaeolithic men from the neolithic men, 

 and a great advance seemed to have been made in some 

 forms of civilisation in the interval between palaeolithic 

 and the neolithic periods. The implements employed in 

 the neolithic time were of the most beautiful and ex- 

 quisite workmanship. They were fashioned by the pro- 

 cess he had endeavoured to describe that evening, and 

 in addition to that it was found they were even rounded 

 to a smooth surface, and those surfaces were sometimes 

 beautifully polished. They were sometimes perforated 

 so as to be attached to handles, and sometimes they had 

 most striking ornamentation worked on the surface. 

 There were indications that for the purpose of obtaining 

 the best materials, for making these stone implements, 

 mining operations were carried on, sometimes with a 

 fair amount of skill, and that something like commerce 

 was carried on for highly-prized materials were carried 

 to enormous distances — half across a continent — in order 

 that the much-coveted materials might come into the hands 

 of persons who had articl.es to exchange for them. In 

 this neolithic period there was evidence that a very rude 

 kind of pottery was employed ; that the dog and other 

 domestic animals had been tamed and brought into use, 

 and here was a primitive but useful kind of agriculture 

 carried on. In this period the bodies were generally 

 buried in a crouching position, and he was sorry to 

 say that there was evidence that was a going back- 

 ward in one respect, for cannibalism was certainly pre- 

 valent, though they might hope that it was occasional 

 rather than habitual. The people of that period seemed to 

 have been short in stature, with oval skulls and black hair. 



It was even possible that ancient people, known as 

 Baskes, which were found in Spain and in the mountain 

 regions of Northern Africa — that these people were 

 descendants of some of these northern men. It was 

 possible, seeing the similarity and habits of many of the 

 Esquimaux tribes in Greenland and British North 

 America were so similar to the habits of the men of the 

 newer palaeolithic period, that the Esquimaux were the 

 direct descendants of the newer palaeolithic men. But since 

 metals were invented the use of stone rapidly declined, 

 though they must recollect that in many parts of the 

 world people had not got beyond the stone-age. They still 

 used the rough or sometimes more carefully prepared 

 weapons made of stone. First, perhaps, iron which 

 was found as a meteoric production and was employed for 

 implements. Then copper, which was found native, was 

 used. Next, man learned to make an alloy of copper and 

 tin, and then they had an age of bronze, which was suc- 

 ceeded by the period when iron came to be very generally 

 employed, which was the iron-age, and he supposed 

 that now they lived in the steel-age. But even now, 

 in this steel age they had the modern survival of the 

 use of flint. Some present could recollect the use of 

 the old tinder-box with strike-a -light, and in mines not 

 very long ago a steel wheel working against a piece 

 of flint was made to emit sparks, was all the 

 light the colliers had to work by in very fiery mines. 

 Flint locks, and guns, and pistols were employed down 

 to recent times, and they were still made at Brandon in 

 Suffolk, where the trade of flint knapping was carried 

 on at the present day. They might find in the museum 

 many illustrations of how flints were worked up 

 from the cores at Brandon, and fashioned into various 

 kinds of flints for muskets. It might be that these old 

 workmen at Brandon must be regarded as lineal de- 

 scendants of the old neo'ithic, and even of palaeolithic 

 workers of flint. They had seen that night how the 

 study of these artificially-worked flints carried them 

 back beyond — very, very far beyond — the periods 

 covered by all histories — even the histories of Egypt 

 and China. But what of the study of the flint itself? As 

 they stood on the sea-shore, the meanest pebble that 

 they picked up and carelessly flung into the water, might 

 reveal to them a story which, if they had really read it 

 aright, must send their thoughts in ever-widening circles 

 outward across the ocean of knowledge towards that 

 mysterious horizon which divided science from the 

 unknowable. 



lU&fefttft 



Transactions of the County of Middlesex Natural History 

 and Science Society. Session 1887-88. (London : 

 Mitchell and Hughes.) 



These transactions contain no small amount of in- 

 teresting matter in a paper on " The Chemistry of London 

 Clay." Mr. W. Mattieu Williams points out that the 

 peculiar character of clays is that they contain not 

 merely silica and alumina, more or less pure, but 

 combined water, as distinguished from moisture. If 

 such combined water is once driven off by heat the clay 

 loses its plasticity, which cannot be restored by me- 

 chanical admixture witb water. 



Mr. Sydney T. Klein, F.L.S., F.L.S., gives an interesting 

 paper on Ephcstia Kiihmella, a lepidopterous larva, which 

 recently appeared at the East End of London, and de- 

 stroyed or spoiled many hundred pounds' worth of flour. 



