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 Eome 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, andwoolly-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 archseologists 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-hear, the 
the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and other extinct animals ; and the latter the 
age of polished stone implements, and when man hegan 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-conflonsed information on this topic, see Lubbock'' s Pre-historic Times. 
