890 The American Naturalist. [October, 
ished stone axes, and that this complex of races originated in the 
east, perhaps between the Caspian and Black Seas, migrated into 
Europe, bringing with them the cereals, flax, and the domestic 
animals and burial practices, and that they had religious ideas. 
As compared with the paleolithic races of the Old World, or 
those who were simply hunters and fishermen, and were of a 
purer, more savage, and primitive race, the neolithic peoples were 
a most- composite type. To narrow down the problem, the 
French archeologists acknowledge that the megalithic monu- 
ments of France were of the same age as the pile-dwellings at 
Robenhausen, near Zurich, which are of the polished stone age. 
It is well known that the lake-dwellers of Switzerland, as the 
centuries went on, received from the east and south bronze imple- 
ments, and a knowledge of the art of making bronze tools. It is 
also known that the dolmens of Northwestern France were still 
used as places of burial as late as the beginning of the bronze 
age. Hence it seems natural to infer that the people who built 
these monuments were the ancestors of the Celt-speaking Welsh, 
Irish, and Bretons. The Robenhausen civilization was not prob- 
ably much older than that of Egypt; and it seems reasonable to 
suppose that the menhirs and dolmens of France were of recent 
age, compared with the troglodytes of Spy and Neanderthal, the 
cave-dwellers of Cro-Magnon, of Dordogne, and of Kent’s Hole 
or the men of the Mentone rock-shelters. 
At all events—and this is the great charm of such inquiries—the 
problem is as yet unsolved. We may wander up and down these 
alignments, so weird and awe-inspiring, and speculate as to what 
manner of men were their builders. Few places in the world are 
enveloped in such an atmosphere of myth and doubt. The very 
people now inhabiting these stone-studded plains, perhaps their 
remote descendants, speak a semi-fossil language, go about 
among these monuments of the dead in a funereal garb of black, 
still cherish a few pagan, almost prehistoric, superstitions. They 
can readily talk with Celtic, Irish, and Welsh, but French is a 
foreign language to them; and, in short, they are a link between 
the present and the age of stone. Many English travelers visit 
this strangely interesting region. Why is it that so few Ameri- 
cans care to wander to the Morbihan ? 



