514 -Pro/. Milne — Across Europe and Asia. 
mil. The length is, I believe, 71 mil. In the centre of this a hole 
has been bored, which, from its conical shape, looks as if it had been 
rymed out by means of a flake of flint. 1 Round the diameter of this, 
circular bands have been deeply scratched. Another curiously- 
shaped article is spheroidal in form, the two diameters being re- 
spectively 45 and 58 mil. Upon it, as upon the cylindrical body 
which has been j ust described, there are bands of circles traversing 
its surface in different directions. The use of these articles does not 
appear to be known. They were found in clay at about the depth 
of 2-| m et res, and were accompanied by skells like Pupa, Helix, and 
Succinea, indicating freshwater and terrestrial conditions. In ad- 
dition to these I also saw many other relics of bygone times. 
Amongst these there were many gouge-shaped stone chisels, like 
those which are dug up in Japan, Newfoundland, and many parts 
of North America. These, I believe, were used to dress skins with 
in a manner similar to that in which a Micrnac now performs the 
sarne Operation with a knife. There were also some teeth of 
Cervus elaphus, which had holes bored through tkem, bones of 
Equns caballus and Bison priscus. From the comparison of these 
beds with others also in the vicinity of the town, where the remains 
of the Mammoth have been found, Mr. Tschersky, their discoverer 
and describer, appears to think that they in all probability belong to 
a Middle Stone period. 
Besides those animals which I have just mentioned, others, which 
are conspicuous amongst the list of European Pleistocene mammalia, 
have also been found in the vicinity of Irkutsk. Thus we have 
Elephas primigenius, Bhinoceros tichorhinus, Equus caballus, Cervus 
tarandus, Cervus elaphus, Cervus capreolus, and very many others. 
Prof. Boyd Dawkins shows that the Palseolithic cave-dwellers of 
Europe have a blood relation with the Eskimos of North America, a 
view which is chiefiy founded on the fact that these two races, which 
are now removed so far by both space and time, apparently used the 
same set of implements, a condition w’hich at the present day only 
exists between blood-related tribes. The Musk-sheep and Reindeer 
which now give food to the Eskimo, having also furnished food to 
the early cave-dwellers, strengthens the idea, — and it was as these 
animals retreated from Europe across Asia towards the north-east, 
that man retreated also. The bones of these animals, as Mr. Boyd 
Dawkins teils us, together with those that I mentioned, mark the 
line of this retreat across Siberia. The flint implements that I found 
upon the Kan, together with others of like kind from neiglibouring 
localities, teil us that certain implement-forming minerals were 
everywhere souglit out and utilized by primitive Man, who, chipping 
them into weapons at each convenient resting-place, has thereby 
left liis spoor. If this migration is a fact, and it seems, when all 
the evidence is considered, to be probable enough, then it may be 
correlated with those periods of great cold to which I have already 
several times referred. 
1 The specimens are figured by Mr. Tschersky, who has also described them in the 
Proceedings of the Geographica! Society of Irkutsk, Sept. 18th, 1872. 
