moved among them and controlled them with a conscious and uncontested superiority. Let us see what can be learned of the habits and endowments of this primeval

man.

Was primeval man created in Europe, where we have the earliest traces of his existence, or was he here an emigrant from the East? In answer to this question we can produce no decisive facts. There are, however, considerations of weight. In all the later epochs, even of the Age of Stone, there was evidently a continuous migration from the direction of the Asiatic hive. The movement of popu lation has always been westward in regions to the west of the Orient, and it has always been eastward in regions to the east of the Orient. The westward wave overflowed Europe, and in later days crossed the Atlantic. The eastward wave populated Tartary and China, and, as may be presumed, dashed across the Straits of Behring, and flooded the American continent at a remote period. To say the least, till the American shores were reached by the westward wave from Europe, the tide of population in America had always set from north to south. The primeval inhabitants of North America were Asiatics in their features, their language, and their arts, and tradition speaks of them as moving from the direction of Asia. These movements of human populations, like radiating streams, from the western part of Asia, certainly afford a presumption that the only people of whose movement we have neither history, tradition, nor buried monument, proceeded also from the direction of the Orient.

From the same quarter of the world proceeded most of our domestic animals and plants, and in the same quarter of the world the perpetually uttered prophecies of the geologic ages proclaimed that the line of animal life should have its culmination. We have, then, strong presumptive

evidence that the men of the Stone Age were brethren of the men who came afterward from the East and taught them the use of the metals, and eventually displaced them from the fertile plains and valleys of Southern Europe. It seems reasonable to suppose that the Iberian tribes and the savage Ligurians, subjugated by the Romans, and described by Cæsar as dwelling in caves, may have been the southern representatives of the primitive folk, while the Finns and Lapps, as Nilsson suggests, may be the more modern and more northern representatives of the same folk, retreating northward with the retreat of the glacial fauna which followed the retreat of the glaciers. From the northern shores of Europe and Asia the same folk crossed to America; and the Esquimaux and North American Indians are the Stone folk in America, still following the pursuits of their ancestors-still using the bow, the kyak or canoe, and the stone hatchet, and perpetuating the Age of Stone in a remote land.

Primeval man, it must be admitted, was a barbarian, but he was by no means the stepping-stone between the apes and modern man. There is not a particle of evidence that he was not possessed of the faculty of speech, and did not exercise the same intellectual and moral powers as the citizen of the United States. Few human crania or other bones have ever been discovered upon which the judgment of the comparative anatomist could be brought to bear. Considerable diversity appears; but the skulls belong to the brachycephalic (or round-head) type, which, according to respectable ethnologists, was the type of the ancient Ligurian head.

Primeval man used the spear and the bow in his conflicts with the tiger, the bear, and the hyena, and in the wars which he waged with his fellow-man; he chased the elephant, the goat, and the musk-ox over the plains of South

ern Europe, and fished with single and double pointed barbed hooks in the cool streams of Scandinavia. That he dwelt in caves we know. These were Nature's provision for the houseless. But there is no reason for supposing that he did not soon devise more comfortable dwellings. He seems to have resided at times upon the banks of riv» ers and by the ocean's shore. Whole villages, it would seem, must have cast into one common pile the refuse of their tables. These accumulations are sometimes several hundred yards in length, and from three to nine feet in height. The flint folk, whose household ware is mingled with the kitchen rubbish, must have dwelt in huts above the ground. At a somewhat later epoch we know that they drove piles in the lakes of Central Europe, and constructed platforms on which their dwellings were built. From these habitations they cast into the lake the refuse of their houses. By dredging, we recover stores of broken pottery, and implements of stone for cutting and for skinning, together with the bones of quadrupeds known to inhabit Europe in the Age of Stone. The dolmens of the same epoch prove also that primeval man understood the art of rough masonry.

There is no decisive proof that the earliest flint folk engaged in the cultivation of the soil or the domestication of the wild beasts. It is true that we find associated with human relics the remains of the hog, the dog, the ox, the horse, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the reindeer, the elephant, all of which have been domesticated in subsequent ages; and we certainly are not precluded from the presumption that some of these animals began to yield willing obedience to man even in this twilight epoch. We must cheerfully admit that these primitive people may have accomplished-undoubtedly did accomplish-many achievements of skill and intelligence of which it is now impossi

ble to discover the record. Their food, like their dwellings, was at first supplied spontaneously by Nature; but during the epoch of the pile habitations, man seems to have learned the art of producing grain and vegetables. In some of the earthen pots dredged from the Swiss lakes have been found winter stores of fruits and cereals. Among them were beautiful specimens of wheat, and, in addition, barley, oats, peas, lentils, and acorns. At this epoch the people must have cultivated the ground and raised cattle. The discovery of millstones, with pestles of granite and freestone, shows that they knew how to grind their grain. The use of fire was known, and upon this they roasted their meat. They ate the marrow and brains of the animals killed, as we find the bones split open for the removal of these substances.

The clothing of the primeval folk was probably at first formed from the skins of quadrupeds; but during the age of the lacustrine cities they had learned the art of manufacturing textile fabrics, since among the other débris of the pile habitations have been found fragments of linen cloth. The garments, formed either of skins, bark, or cloth, were sewed together with needles and awls, of which the lacustrine cities furnish examples.

The man of this period was possessed of some degree of taste. This is shown first in the workmanship displayed upon the bone and horn handles of many of his tools, in the finish of lance and arrow heads, knives and daggers, in the fashion of his pottery, and in beads formed of pebbles, pieces of coral, and the teeth of wild animals. In some instances whistles have been found made of the digital bones of certain ruminants. His taste, and even no mean degree of artistic skill, are also displayed in the sculpturing of his tools and implements, and his delineations upon pieces of ivory, horn, and slate. "The decorations on many pots

and implements," says Vogt," consisting of simple, straight, angular, or crossed lines, exhibit a certain sense of beauty; but the drawings of animals, as discovered by MM. Lartet and Garrigou, are still more surprising. They are mostly engraved on bones, but also on slate. Those found by M. Garrigou represent heads and tails of fishes; those in possession of M. Lartet represent large mammals, among which the reindeer is easily recognized by the antlers. * * The masterpiece in Lartet's collection is a handle carved from the antlers of a reindeer, a real sculptured work, the body of the animal being so turned and twisted that it forms a handle for a boy's hand. All other drawings are in sharp and firm outlines, graved upon the surface of the bone, and it may be seen that the artist, in working it, turned the bone in various directions." The most interesting of all these relics of primeval art is the delineation upon ivory of the outlines of the hairy mammoth in a style which, though rudely and carelessly executed, leaves no doubt of the identity of the original of the picture. These people evidently possessed a marked predisposition to art. The rude hunter, wearied in the chase, amused himself in reproducing upon ivory and stone the forms that had excited his interest, and upon which undoubtedly he depended for subsistence and perhaps for service.

Lastly, primeval man was endowed with a religious na ture. He formed numerous utensils consecrated to the ceremonies of religion. He buried his dead in grottoes. closed with slabs, as the Jews continued to do at a later day. The recumbent position of many of the skeletons. shows that, like the dead of the ancient Peruvians, they were entombed with an observance of religious rites. Like the American Indian, he provided his deceased friend with food and arms to supply his necessities while on the journey to another world. These are facts of extreme signifi