Atlantic, has called forth numerous remarks. Throughout America, it was observed by Dr. Morton, that one of the most usual forms of burial was to place the corpse in a half upright position, or a sitting attitude,[24] with the knees and hams bent, and the arms folded on the legs. Now this is a common posture in Britain—a clear proof of the extent to which similar practices are independent of imitation. If any ornaments be found with the corpse, they are chiefly of cannel coal. The implements are all of stone, or bone—the celt, the arrow, the spear-head, the adze, and the mallet.

What was the physical aspect of the country at this time? The present, minus the clearings—wood and fen, fen and wood, in interminable succession; woods of oak in the clay soils; of beech on the chalk; of birch, pine, and fir in the northern parts of the island. The boats were essentially monoxyla, i.e., single trees hollowed out, sometimes by stone adzes, oftener by fire. The chief dresses were the skins of beasts.

Such is what archæology tells us. The other questions belong to the naturalist. What was the ancient Fauna? Whether the earliest men were cotemporaneous with the latest of the extinct quadrupeds, has been already asked—the answer being doubtful. How far the earliest beasts of chase and domestication were the same as the present, is a fresh question. The sheep may reasonably be considered as a recent introduction; but with all the other domestic animals there are, perhaps, as good reasons for deriving them from native species as for considering them to be of foreign origin.[25] The hog of the present breed, may indeed be of continental origin; so may the present cat, horse, and ass. Nevertheless, the hog, cat, horse, and ass, whose bones are found in the alluvial deposits, may have been domesticated. The Devonshire, Hereford, and similar breeds of oxen may be new; but the bos longifrons may have originated some native breeds, which the inhabitants of even the earliest period—the period of stone and bone implements—may have domesticated. The opinion of Professor Owen is in favour of this view; and certainly, though it cannot be enforced by mere authority, it is recommended by its simplicity,—avoiding, as it does, the unnecessary multiplication of causes. The goat was certainly indigenous, but no more certainly domesticated than the equally indigenous deer. This indigenous rein-deer may or may not have been trained. The miserable aliments of the beach, shell-fish and crustacea, constituted no small part of the earliest human food; and so (for the northern part of the isle at least) did eggs, seals, and whales. Surely in these primitive portions of the Stone period our habits must have approached those of the Lap, the Samöeid, and the Eskimo, however different they may be now.

But metals, in the course of time, were introduced; first bronze, and then iron; gold and lead being, perhaps, earlier than either, earlier too[26] than silver. Of gold we take but little notice. It was not a useful metal; but subservient only to the purposes of barbaric ornament. The next fact is of great importance.

In those tombs where the implements are most exclusively of stone, and where the other signs of antiquity correspond, the skulls are of unusually small capacity. In the next period they are larger. There are also some notable points of difference in the shape. Such at least is the current opinion; although the proofs that such difference is not referable to difference of age or sex, is by no means irrefragable. Still we may take the fact as it is supposed and reported to be.

If we do this, we are prepared for another question. How far is the introduction of metal implements and of new arts, a sign of the introduction of a fresh stock or variety of the human species? How far, too, is the difference in the capacity of the skulls? How far the fact of the two changes coinciding? The answer has generally been in the affirmative. The men who used implements of bronze were Kelts; the men who eked out their existence with nothing better than adzes and arrow-heads of stone, were other than Keltic. They were ante-Keltic aborigines, whom a Keltic migration annihilated and superseded. Such is the widely-spread doctrine. Yet it is doubtful whether the premises bear out the inference—far[27] as it has been recognized. I doubt it myself; because, admitting (for the sake of argument) that there is a difference in the size and the shape of the skulls, it by no means follows that a difference of stock is the only way of accounting for it. Improved implements, taken by themselves, merely denote either a progress in the useful arts, or, what is more likely, some new commercial relations. The same improved implements, if considered as means to an end, denote an improvement in the nutrition of the individuals who used them. The bones of a man who hunts stags and oxen with bronze weapons will carry more flesh, and consequently be more fuller developed than those of a man who, for want of better instruments than flint and bone arrow-heads, feeds chiefly upon whale blubber and shell-fish. Now, what applies to the bones in general, applies—though perhaps in a less degree—to the skull. In the difference, then, between the crania of the Stone and Bronze periods I see no introduction of a new variety of our species, but merely the effects of a better diet, arising from an improvement in the instruments for obtaining it. If the assumption, then, of a pre-Keltic stock be gratuitous, the question as to the date of our population is considerably narrowed. Its introduction (as already indicated) must have been sufficiently late to allow the original affinities between[28] the Keltic dialects of the British Isles, and the Keltic dialects of the European Continent, to remain visible. But as many millenniums would be required for the opposite effect of obliterating the original similarity, this is saying but little. All that it is safe to assert is—

1. That the primitive Britons occupied the islands sufficiently early to allow of the relative levels of the land and sea on the valley of the Forth to alter to the amount of twenty-five feet—there or thereabouts.

2. That they occupied it sufficiently late to allow the common origin of the Gaelic and British tongues to remain visible in the nineteenth century.

This latter position rests upon the supposition that the early inhabitants in question were of the same stock as the present Welsh and Gaels—the contrary doctrine being held to be, not erroneous, but gratuitous and unnecessary.

We are now prepared to find that in certain monuments, less ancient than those of the Stone period, the enclosed relics are of metal, and that this metal is an alloy of copper and tin—bronze—not brass, which is an alloy of copper and zinc. Not only are such relics more elaborate in respect to their workmanship, but the kinds of them are more varied. They are referable indeed to the three classes of warlike instruments, industrial implements, and personal ornaments, but the[29] varieties of each sort are comparatively numerous. Swords and shields, which would be well-nigh impossible accoutrements during the Stone period, now come into use; so do moulds for casting, as well as bracelets and necklaces. In short, the signs of a higher civilization and fresh means for the conquest of either Man or Nature appear.

The evidence that the Bronze period succeeded the Stone, is on the whole satisfactory; indeed its a priori likelihood is so great, as to make a little go a long way. At the same time, it must not be supposed that in each individual case the newest monuments wherein we find bone and stone are older than the oldest wherein we find