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the geological history, an unconscious, gradual deposit left 
by the remains of extinct and unknown races in the soil of 
the fields or under the sediment of the waters. The earliest 
European barbarian, as he burned his canoe from a log 
or fabricated his necklace from a bone, or worked out his 
knife from a flint, was, in reality, writing a history of his 
race for distant days. We can follow him now in his 
wanderings through the rivers and lakes, and on the edges 
of the forest ; we open his simple mounds of burial and 
study his barbarian tools and ornaments ; we discover that 
he knew nothing of metals, and that bone and flint, and 
amber and coal were his materials ; we trace out his 
remarkable defences, and huts built on piles in the various 
lakes of Europe where the simple savage could escape the 
few gigantic animals which then existed ; and we find, also, 
that he fabricated some rude pottery. Of what race he was, 
or at what time he appeared amidst the forests of Northern 
Europe, no one can confidently say, but the Archaeologists 
have denominated their period the " Stone Age of European 
Antiquity." 
Since this Paper was read, the skulls alluded to have been purchased and 
presented to the Museum of the Philosophical and Litei-ary Society of Leeds, 
by J. Gr. Marshall, Esq., Arthur Marshall, Esq., Andrew Fairbairn, Esq., and 
James Hamilton Richardson, Esq. 
