gradually
above the sea at the rate of about four feet in a century. This
elevation is observed through a space of many hundred miles, increasing
toward the north. The southern extremity, on the contrary, experiences a
slow depression.

These slow movements are nothing more than a continuation of what has
been going on for numberless ages. Since the tertiary period two-thirds
of Europe have been lifted above the sea. The Norway coast has been
elevated 600 feet, the Alps have been upheaved 2000 or 3000, the
Apennines 1000 to 2000 feet. The country between Mont Blanc and Vienna
has been thus elevated since the adjacent seas were peopled with
existing animals. Since the Neolithic age, the British Islands have
undergone a great change of level, and, indeed, have been separated from
the continent through the sinking of England and the rising of Scotland.

[Sidenote: Early inhabitants of Europe.]

At the earliest period Europe presents us with a double population. An
Indo-Germanic column had entered it from the east, and had separated
into two portions the occupants it had encountered, driving one to the
north, the other to the south-west. These primitive tribes betray,
physiologically, a Mongolian origin; and there are indications of
considerable weight that they themselves had been, in ancient times,
intruders, who, issuing from their seats in Asia, had invaded and
dislocated the proper autochthons of Europe. In the Pleistocene age
there existed in Central Europe a rude race of hunters and fishers,
closely allied to the Esquimaux. Man was contemporary with the cave
bear, the cave lion, the amphibious hippopotamus, the mammoth. Caves
that have been examined in France or elsewhere have furnished for the
stone age, axes, knives, lance and arrow points, scrapers, hammers. The
change from what has been termed the chipped, to the polished stone
period, was very gradual. It coincides with the domestication of the
dog, an epoch in hunting life. The appearance of arrow heads indicates
the invention of the bow, and the rise of man from a defensive to an
offensive mode of life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how
inventive talent was displaying itself; bone and horn tips, that the
huntsman was including smaller animals, and perhaps birds, in his chase;
bone whistles, his companionship with other huntsmen, or with his dog.
The scraping knives of flint, indicate the use of skin for clothing, and
rude bodkins and needles, its