GEOLOGICAL TOPICS. 



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cliase, of love, or of holiday. By conventional signs they announce to their 

 friends their victories or their defeats, the number of theu' killed and of their 

 prisoners. By the number or the form of the stones placed on his sepulchre 

 they explained the name, the quality, the exploits of a defunct chieftain. 

 While alive he had made them write them on his body by means of tattooing, 

 which is less a mere ornament, as it has so long been thought, than the bio- 

 graphy of the man and of his ancestors. 



" These traces drawn upon the earth, these trees, these rocks, these stones 

 placed in certain order or grouped in varied number, such was the first writing 

 of these antediluvian peoples. Men like us, those first-born made that which 

 we have made since. As their ideas enlarged and complicated themselves they 

 complicated also the means of communicating them ; their signs became more 

 varied, more complex, more moveable. Not finding everywhere these signs or 

 the material proper to fabricate them, they carried them with them. It is thus 

 that the Romans carried with them their penates and their household-gods. 

 Some Asiatic and African nations still do the same ; their relics and their gods 

 are the characters of their tongue. With us also has not each saint his 

 symbol ? 



" If each individual or head of a family had had only those signs which belonged 

 to himself they would have been understood by those around him, as his wife 

 and his children, but he could not have communicated with his neighbour. He 

 had, then, besides these special signs, or, if you please, this household lan- 

 guage, general signs intended for all. Hence the analogy of types from dis- 

 tances so great and in countries so different. They have been introduced 

 as men, becoming more numerous, spread out from the cradle of their fore- 

 fathers." 



It is thus our French author has let his imagination have play, and persuaded 

 himself that he has found out the characters which constituted the first and 

 universal material language. We cannot say that on this point oiu' faith is 

 great in the accuracy of M. de Perthes' conclusions, but his speculations are 

 suggestive; and we have more than once turned our thoughts from these 

 ethereal theories to those great monoliths (of which the so-called Druid stones 

 and Druid circles in our own lands are examples) that are found seemingly distri- 

 buted nearly all over the world, presenting in regions far apart from each other 

 remarkably similar characters ; — everywhere massive ; of local material ; of the 

 simplest workmanship; everywhere older than every other architectural erection; 

 everywhere of unknown origin ; and everywhere with the strongest marks of 

 the highest antiquity. Is it possible these may be the venerable monuments 

 of the first wandering nations ? I know, of course, the opinions of our best 

 antiquaries on British monuments of this class ; but I am by no means per- 

 suaded of their sepulchral origin, still less that many of them have ever been 

 covered by mounds of earth. Not a stone, nor a coin, nor a relic of any kind 

 has ever been discovered in or near them that could give a datum to their erec- 

 tion. And the situations in which they are placed are very remarkable and 

 different from those usually selected for burial-mounds, or barrows. 



I think there is no point bearing on these remarkable discoveries of 

 stone-weapons which should not be thoroughly considered before rejection. 

 Prom the wildest theories at this moment we may be led to the discovery of 

 important facts. 



The way in which M. Boucher de Perthes accounts for the great number, in 

 certain localities, of these flint objects is singular and fanciful, and the passage 

 is worth transcribing. 



Any one visiting me may count them by thousands, and yet I have kept 

 only those which presented some interest. From those beds which I have 

 called " Celtic" I have seen them drawn in barrows to metal the neighbouring 



