The Stone Period. 



31 



on in the world ; and it is probable that evidence may yet be forth- 

 coming to prove, that degradation as well as development has hap- 

 pened to the lower races beyond the range of direct history. The 

 miserable " Digger Indians w of North America, who lead a wan- 

 dering life, lurking in holes and caves, slinking from the sight of 

 other Indians, and subsisting chiefly on wild roots and fish, were 

 not always in this deplorable condition ; for they are in part Shos- 

 honees or Snake Indians, reduced to their present state of degrada- 

 tion by their enemies the Blackfeet, who obtained guns from the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, overpowered the Snakes, took away their 

 hunting-grounds, and compelled them to sink to their present 

 culture-level, causing them to abandon certain arts which they 

 practised in their more fortunate days. The culture-history of man- 

 kind, however, is probably not the history of a course of degradation, 

 or even of equal oscillations to and fro, but of a movement which, 

 in spite of frequent pauses and relapses, has on the whole been for- 

 ward ; and there appears to have been from age to age a growth in 

 man's power over nature, which no degrading influences have been 

 able permanently to check. 



Primeval man appears to have possessed a mind capable of 

 reasoning, disposed to reason, and able to acquire, to accumulate, and 

 to transmit knowledge, thus enabling each succeeding generation to 

 start from a higher and still higher vantage-ground of accumulated 

 knowledge. 



I confess that I am unable to trace any necessary connection 

 between a mere babyhood in the practice of the industrial arts and 

 a low state of moral culture, but upon this branch of the subject 

 time will not allow me to enter. 



Neither can I touch upon another point, of great interest, the 

 question of the Antiquity of Man. I have said that the Stone 

 Period "affords us no measure of time/' neither does it of time 

 positive; but in arriving at conclusions with regard to time relative 

 the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Periods are as valuable to us as are the 

 successive types of fish, reptile, and mammal, to the geologist. 



Discussion having been invited, Professor Rupert Jones, to whom 

 a direct appeal was made, said it would be very difficult to add any- 

 thing to Mr. Stevens' extremely perfect elaboration of the subject., 



