1893 - 94 .] T)vl^i\mvd on Rise and Progress of Anthropology. 229 
these are local and necessary incidents of the competition between 
rival races. Worked objects of stone, horn, wood or metal, when 
met with in stratified deposits, serve a similar purpose in Anthro- 
pology that fossils do in geology. Let me here observe, however, 
that although Man is the only being who has acquired and developed 
the power of fashioning, from the raw material around him, tools 
and instruments, by means of which he has so largely altered the 
surface of the globe, and utilised the forces and products of nature 
in the furtherance of his unique civilisation, he is not alone in the 
knowledge and application of mechanical contrivances. Many other 
animals possess, in a minor degree, the power of adapting means to 
special ends. Eesults of this principle may be seen in the con- 
struction of the dam of a beaver, the nest of a bird, and the cell of 
a bee. But from all such productions human workmanship is 
broadly defined by the fact that it involves the use of artificial 
tools. 
One other characteristic feature of man’s methods may be noticed. 
Although fire, in the form of lightning, volcanoes, conflagrations, 
&c., must have been a conspicuous phenomenon ever since organic 
life appeared on the globe, he alone has taken advantage of its pro- 
perties to improve his condition of life. So indispensable to human 
civilisation has the agency of fire been regarded that the earliest 
traditions assign its origin to heaven, whence Prometheus is said to 
have stolen it in a hollow tube. Hence the presence of charcoal in 
circumstances which preclude its production or importation by 
cosmical causes — as, for example, when it is met with in the debris 
of a cave — would be legitimate evidence of the contemporaneity of 
Man. 
(6) Geology . — The sciences of geology and anthropology may be 
said to join hands in the Post-Pliocene or Quaternary period, as the 
chief problems and phenomena to be investigated are common to 
both. Between the two sciences there lies a neutral borderland, in 
which their respective materials overlap and interdigitate in a most 
remarkable manner. The geologist’s chief object is to interpret the 
life-history of the period ; and here, for the first time, he encounters 
evidence of the existence of Man. 
The exceptional combination of climatal conditions which cul- 
minated in the glacial period is another strange phenomenon which 
