244 Chronicles of Science. [April, 



2. AKCH^OLOGY (Pre-Historic). 



To whatever country the white man goes he carries with him, in 

 addition to the blessings of Christianity, a string of evils which, 

 sooner or later, destroy the aborigines from off the face of the earth. 

 Alcohol, fire-arms, clothes, small-pox, measles, and many other 

 noxious accompaniments of civilization have done their work upon 

 the aborigines of America (as they have on those of Australia, Tas- 

 mania, and New Zealand), but the last fatal blow seems to have 

 fallen upon them in the opening of the Great Pacific Eailroad from 

 New York to San Francisco. That which we hail as the harbinger 

 of peace and good- will to men, this great highway for the nations, 

 3300 miles in extent, sounds the death-knell of the Pawnees and 

 the Sioux, the Crows, the Arrapahoes and Cheyennes, as certainly 

 as it threatens death to Mormonism. Both will in a few years be 

 swept away. 



Mr. Frederick Whyrnper, giving an account of the line in 

 'Illustrated Travels/* says, — " In the neighbourhood of Cheyenne 

 there is a large military station, Fort Eussell, where some 900 

 soldiers of the United States' army are quartered, expressly for the 

 benefit of the Sioux and those ' dogs of Indians,' the Cheyennes. 

 The railroad lost some excellent engineers by the hands of the latter 

 when the preliminary surveys for the line were being made. General 

 Sheridan was enabled to surround several of their villages last winter, 

 and killed and subdued a large number of them. Several hundreds 

 thereby left this world for happier hunting-grounds. The General 

 had the reputation, however, of treating the women and children 

 with great humanity." f This is a sad picture to contemplate ; but 

 sooner or later the same thing will occur in New Zealand. In 

 Tasmania one solitary old woman, named " Lalla Eookh," represents 

 the last of the aborigines ! The natives of Australia are driven 

 into the wilderness. All the good and pleasant places, once their 

 own, are occupied by our countrymen. 



Dr. Haast has communicated to Professor Owen an interesting 

 account of the discovery, in the province of Canterbury, New 

 Zealand, of several cooking-pits and kitchen-middens, containing 

 the remains of various species of Dinornis. Such conclusive evi- 

 dence of the contemporaneity of this now quite extinct bird with 

 man in this island is most valuable to the ethnologist, and leads 

 him to hope for fuller details. 



Mr. F. Spurrell has lately obtained from the neighbourhood of 

 Dartford, Kent, several flint implements of the palaeolithic type. 



* Part XIV. Edited by H. W. Bates, Assistant-Secretary to the Eoyal 

 Geographical Society. London : Cassell, Petter, and Galpin. 

 f Page 34. 



