31 
secure an abundant harvest, or to avert injuries from the crops. 
Another and probably more important reason was that the 
tillage was often done by large bands of men and women 
working together on grounds common to the tribe. When 
the work was finished, the tools prepared for it would be 
covered up in some place where they could remain safely till 
again required. In the same way, and for the same reason, 
the stone gouges used by the Indians in their sugar-camps in 
spring were hidden away in numbers till the returning season 
again brought the tribe to the sugar-grove. 
These facts applied to the stone implements found in river 
gravels in Europe give some probability at least to the theory 
that they were agricultural hoes and picks. An agricultural 
population would cultivate the alluvial lands near the rivers. 
They would seek in the neighbouring flint-gravels for the 
material of their hoes. After use they would leave these in 
their fields or garden-beds in large numbers. Subsequent 
river-floods might mix the used and unused hoes with the 
rejected pieces in the re-arranged gravel-beds, and all this 
might take place without mixture of the other implements 
used by the people. It would thus appear possible that the 
valley of the Somme, for example, may have been the seat of 
a primitive agricultural people, whose residences may have 
been in fortified “ pahs !> or villages on the high grounds, 
while their fields lay along the stream. Where they resided, 
domestic implements, pottery, and weapons of polished stone 
or bone may be found * Where they laboured the fields, only 
palaeolithic implements may occur. There may also have been 
contemporary hunting populations in the hills who would not 
use any hoes, but only spears, arrow-heads, &c. Further, in 
any case such implements as hoes would be little likely to 
occur in caves or Swiss lake-habitations, while they might be 
very abundant in valleys and the beds of streams. Lastly, 
the case of the American mound-builders shows that a people 
may use paleolithic stone instruments in their agriculture, 
while they have in other respects attained sufficient civilization 
to possess polished and often elaboratelv-carved weapons, and 
ornaments ol stone and metal, good pottery, and even textile 
fabrics. This, which was actually the case in America, may 
have also held good in prehistoric Europe. 
In connection with this, it is interesting to reflect that the 
Scriptural history seems to imply the existence of a great 
agricultural population in antediluvian times in the valleys 
of certain rivers in Western Asia. If these people tilled the 
* Genesis iv. 17, v. 29, vi. 1, vi. 21. 
