shell-fish, man was in possession of a fact which was certain
eventually to insure his civilization. He knew how to make a fire. In
peat-beds, under the remains of trees that in those localities have
long ago become extinct, his relics are still found, the implements
that accompany him indicating a distinct chronological order. Near the
surface are those of bronze, lower down those of bone or horn, still
lower those of polished stone, and beneath all those of chipped or rough
stone. The date of the origin of some of these beds cannot be estimated
at less than forty or fifty thousand years.

The caves that have been examined in France and elsewhere have furnished
for the Stone age axes, knives, lance and arrow points, scrapers,
hammers. The change from what may be termed the chipped to the polished
stone period is very gradual. It coincides with the domestication of the
dog, an epoch in hunting-life. It embraces thousands of centuries. 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 manufacture. Shells perforated for bracelets and necklaces
prove how soon a taste for personal adornment was acquired; the
implements necessary for the preparation of pigments suggest the
painting of the body, and perhaps tattooing; and batons of rank bear
witness to the beginning of a social organization.

With the utmost interest we look upon the first germs of art among these
primitive men. They have left its rude sketches on pieces of ivory and
flakes of bone, and carvings, of the animals contemporary with them. In
these prehistoric delineations, sometimes not without spirit, we have
mammoths, combats of reindeer. One presents us with a man harpooning a
fish, another a hunting-scene of naked men armed with the dart. Man is
the only animal who has the propensity of depicting external forms, and
of availing himself of the use of fire.

Shell-mounds, consisting of bones and shells, some of which may be
justly described as of vast extent, and of a date anterior to the Bronze
age, and full of stone implement