31 
as they are with any other remains. The period when those who 
used them lived, can only be conjectured. Mr. Cook, of Holgate, 
has in his possession two axe heads, which were found some j^ears 
ago in the same locality on the surface of the soil. They are 
constructed on the same type, but composed not of flint but of 
felstone. I do not think there is any reason for claiming a high 
antiquity for these implements. They are polished, and therefore 
of the later stone period. It is |)robable they may be assigned to a 
period little anterior to historic times, and that they were fashioned 
by one of the more ancient British tribes, whose rude huts occupied 
the site of the New Gas "Works, and whose hunting ground is now 
traversed by the North Eastern Bailway Company. 
The Bev. J. Kenrick read a paper on ^‘Tlie Use of Stone 
Implements as connected with the History of Civilization.” 
DiJfferent and indeed opposite views had been taken of the relation 
of the savage to the civihzed man, some, as Archbishop Whately 
and the Duke of Ai’gyll, considering him as one who had de¬ 
generated from a state of previous civilization; others, as Sir C. 
Lyell, Sir John Lubbock, Brofessor Huxley, and the followers of 
Mr. Darwin, regarding the savage as representing the primitive 
state of the human race, from which they had risen by the suc¬ 
cessive stages of civilization. Erom a comparison of the arguments 
on either side the author of the Baper cBew the conclusion that as 
man, in his most savage state, possessed the same facidties, affec¬ 
tions and instincts as in the most civilized, and as among these 
was the capacity of improvement, which distinguished him from 
all the lower order of animals, it is reasonable to conclude that 
this capacity, so active in historic times, was not inert in the j)re- 
historic, and that to it the progressive civilization of the human 
race is to be attributed. 
