320 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



cerned ;* and it is by both of those modes that man's place 

 in the geological record has been mainly determined. 



It will be seen that in speaking of implements of stone, 

 bronze, and iron, the geologist is trenching on the field of 

 archaeology, and the archaeologist on that of geology. Both 

 must, in fact, lend their aid in solving the question of man's 

 antiquity ; and whether it be by sepulchral barrows, by 

 shell-mounds— the old feasting-stations of our northern an- 

 cestors — by pile-dwellings in lakes, or by flint implements 

 in river-drifts, much the same kind of reasoning must be 

 employed by both. A lake-dwelling, with implements of 

 stone and bronze, may carry us no further back than the 

 time of the Eomans ; while a tree-canoe, hollowed out by 

 fire, and found under twelve or fourteen feet of river-silt, 

 may take us thousands of years before Rome had a founda- 

 tion. The inhabitants of Northern Europe may have lived 

 on shell-fish, and been wrapt in skins, when the Pharaohs 

 were clothed in fine linen and purple ; but when we find 

 stone implements associated with worked horns of the great 

 Irish elk and reindeer, and with bones of the musk-ox, 

 mammoth, and woolly-haired rhinoceros, and these in silts and 

 drifts that indicate great physical changes in the geography 

 of Europe, then we may rest assured that these monuments 

 are pre-historic and of unknown antiquity. We have no 

 indication in history that the mammoth, rhinoceros, or Irish 

 deer were inhabitants of Southern and Western Europe ; 

 nothing either in history or tradition that points to the time 

 when the reindeer and musk-ox roamed in the latitudes of 

 France and England. It is true that natural events are 

 rarely noticed in ancient history, and especially those of 

 slow and gradual occurrence like the facts of geology ; still 



* Some archaeologists divide the Stone Period into the palceolithic and 

 neolithic stages — the former the age of rude stone implements, and when 

 man shared the possession of Europe with the mammoth, the cave-bear, the 

 the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and other extinct animals ; and the latter the 

 age of polished stone implements, and when man began to domesticate the 

 dog, ox, horse, and other existing mammalia. In this way we have four 

 stages of pre-historic time : — 1. The Ancient Stone age ; 2. The Newer Stone 

 age ; 3. The Bronze age ; and, 4. The Iron age. For much interesting and 

 well-condensed information on this topic, see Lubbock's Pre-historic Times. 



