402 
[June, 
Early Traces of Man. 
— from the most ancient seats of civilisation, Egypt and 
Syria. In those countries, then, no less than in France and 
England, quaternary man preceded all the historic civilisa- 
tions. 
The earliest Quaternary epoch, the preglacial, is charac- 
terised, so far as man’s works are concerned, by a stone 
implement of peculiar form. It is dressed on its two sides, 
usually rather roughly chipped ; it is rounded at the base, 
pointed at the top, and its edges are pretty sharp. In gene- 
ral form it is more or less almond-shaped. This implement, 
in past times called by workmen in quarries “ langue de 
chat ” (cat’s tongue), is now called “hache de St. Acheul,” 
o r “ hache acheulienne ” (hatchet of St. Acheul), terms de- 
rived from the locality in which it has been oftenest found. 
They have been found in abundance in the quaternary allu- 
viums of France, England, and Spain. Nay, within a few 
years they have been found in the valley of the Delaware 
near Trenton, New Jersey, by Dr. Charles C. Abbott. The 
figures which he has published, and his descriptions, tally 
exactly with the St. Acheul hatchets of France and England. 
Nor is it in the New World only that the existence of man 
in the earliest portion of the Quaternary period has been 
proved ; the same thing is true of the Old World. M. Place, 
the explorer of Assyria, has brought to light a St. Acheul 
hatchet of silex which he found under the ruins of the 
palace of Khorsabad. At the Exposition the Abbe Richard 
showed a St. Acheul hatchet, also of silex, from the Lake 
of Tiberias. 
A still more conclusive proof is furnished by Prof. Henry 
W. Haynes, of Boston, who reports a number of wrought 
flints from Egypt, among them several clearly characterised 
St. Acheul hatchets. 
In the February number (1869) of the “ Materiaux pour 
l’Histoire de l’Homme,” M. Adrien Arcelin first made the 
announcement that the grand Egyptian civilisation, like all 
other civilisations, was preceded by an age of stone. He 
had just collected in Upper Egypt several clipped flints. 
Toward the close of the same year this discovery was con- 
firmed by Messrs. Lenormant and Hamy. All the specimens 
brought home by these earliest explorers might be regarded 
as belonging to the Robenhausen epoch, or age of polished 
stone ; only one specimen, presented to the museum of St. 
Germain, came anywhere near the St. Acheul type. 
After Arcelin’s discovery, collections of dressed flints were 
multiplied in Egypt, though without throwing much light 
upon the question. But Sir John Lubbock, in an essay 
