tablished lines of traffic to all parts of Europe, I do not see that his contention could be upset. It would be hard to prove either that the primitive Etruscans could not have discovered the way to manufacture bronze, or that they did not discover it and become a great mercantile people in consequence, before Phoenician commerce had reached the remote shores of the Tyrrhene Sea.

Can it be safely concluded that the palæo-metallic culture which we have been considering was the appanage of any one of the western Eurasiatic races rather than another? Did it arise and develop among the brunet or the blond long-heads or the brunet short-beads? I do not among think there are any means of answering these questions, positively, at present. Schrader has pointed out that the state of culture of the primitive Aryans, deduced from philological data, closely corresponds with that which obtained among the piledwellers in the neolithic stage. But the resemblance of the early stages of civilization among the most different and widely separated races of mankind, should warn us that archæology is no more a sure guide in questions of race than philology.

*

With respect to the osteological characters of the people of the Swiss pile-dwellings information is as yet scanty. So far as the present evidence goes, they appear to have comprised both broad-heads and long heads of inoderate stature. In France, England, and Germany, both long and broad skulls are found in tumuli belonging to the neolithic stage. In some parts of England the long skulls, and in others the broad skulls, accompany the higher stature. In the Scandinavian peninsula, nine-tenths of the neolithic people are decided long-heads in Denmark, there is a much larger proportion of

broad-heads.

* Professor Virchow has guardedly expressed the opinion that the oldest inhabitants of the Swiss pile-dwellings were broad-heads, and that later on (commencing before the bronze stage) there was a gradual infusion of long-heads among them. (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xvii., 1885) There is independent evidence of the existence of broad-heads in the Cevennes during the neolithic period, and I should be disposed to think that this opin. ion may well be correct; but the examination of the evidence on which it is, at present, based does not lead me to feel very confident about it.

In view of all the facts known to me (which cannot be stated in greater detail in this place), I am disposed to think that the blond long-heads, the brunet longheads, and the brunet broad-heads have existed on the continent of Europe throughout the Recent period: that only the former two at first inhabited our islands; but that a mixed race of tall broad heads, like some of the Blackforesters of the present day, so excellently described by Ecker, migrated from the continent and formed that tall contingent of the population which has been identified (rightly or wrongly) with the Belge by Thurnam and which seems to have subsequently lost itblond long-heads. self among the predominant brunet and

The

I do not think there is anything to warrant the conclusion that the palæo-metallic culture of Europe took its origin among the blond long-head (or supposed Aryan) race; or that the people of the Swiss piledwellings belonged to that race. long-heads among them may just as likely have been brunets. In north-eastern Italy there is clear evidence of the superposition of at least four stages of culture, in which that of the copper and bronze using terramare people comes second; marked by Etruscan domination occupies a stage the third place; and that is followed by the stage which appertains to the Gauls, with their long swords and other characteristic iron work. In western Switzerland, on the other hand, at La Téne, and elsewhere, similar relics show that the Gauls followed upon the latest population of the pile-dwellings among whom traces of Etruscan influence (though not of dominion) are to be found. Helbig supposes the terramare people to have been Greco Latinspeaking Pelasgi, and consequently Aryan. But we cannot suppose the people of the pile-dwellings of Switzerland to have been speakers of primitive Greco-Latin (if ever there was such a language). And if the Gauls were the first speakers of Celtic who got into Switzerland, what Aryan language can the people of the pile-dwellings have spoken ?*

As I have already mentioned, there is

*See Dr. Munro's excellent work, The Lake Dwellings of Europe, for La Téne. Readers of Professor Rhys's recent articles (Scottish Review. 1890) may suggest that the pile-dwelling people spoke the Gaedhelic form of Celtic, and the Gauls the Brythonic form.

not the least doubt that man existed in north-western Europe during the Pleistocene or Quaternary epoch. It is not only certain that men were contemporaries of the mammoth, the hairy rhinoceros, the reindeer, the cave bear, and other great carnivora, in England and in France, but a great deal has been ascertained about the modes of life of our predecessors. They were savage hunters, who took advantage of such natural shelters as overhanging rocks and caves, and perhaps built themselves rough wigwams; but who had no domestic animals and have left no sign that they cultivated plants. In many localities. there is evidence that a very considerable interval the so-called hiatus-intervened between the time when the Quaternary or palæolithic men occupied particular caves and river basins and the accumulation of the débris left by their neolithic successors. And, in spite of all the warnings against negative evidence afforded by the history of geology, some have very positively asserted that this means a complete break between the Quaternary and the Recent populations-that the Quaternary population followed the retreating ice northward and left behind them a desert which remained unpeopled for ages. Other high authorities, on the contrary, maintain that the races of men who now inhabit Europe may all be traced back to the Great Ice Age. When a conflict of opinion of this kind obtains among reasonable and instructed men, it is generally a safe conclusion that the evidence for neither view is worth much. Certainly that is the result of my own cogitations with regard to both the hiatus doctrine (in its extreme form) and its opposite-though I think the latter by much the more likely to turn out right. But I hesitate to adopt it on the evidence which has been obtained up to this time.

No doubt, human bones and skulls of various types have been discovered in close proximity to palæolithic implements and to skeletons of quaternary quadrupeds; no doubt, if the bones and skulls in question were not human, their contemporaneity would hardly have been questioned. But, since they are human, the demand for further evidence really need not be as cribed to merc conservative prejudice. Because the human biped differs from all other bipeds and quadrupeds, in the tendency to put his dead out of sight in various ways; commonly by burial. It is a habit worthy of all respect in itself, but

generative of subtle traps and grievous pitfalls for the unwary investigator of human paleontology. For it may easily happen that the bones of him that "died o' Wednesday," may thus come to lie alongside the bones of animals that were extinct thousands of years before that Wednesday; and yet the interment may have been effected so many thousands of years ago that no out ward sign betrays the difference in date. In all investigations of this kind, the most careful and critical study of the circumstances is needful if the results are to be accepted as perfectly trustworthy.

In the case of the remains found in a cave of the valley of the Neander, near Düsseldorf, half a century ago-the characters of which gave rise to a vast amount of discussion at that time and subsequently -the circumstances of the discovery were but vaguely known. The skeleton was met with in a deposit, the loess, which is known to Be of quaternary age; there was no evidence to show how it came there. Consequently, not only was its exact age justly and properly declared to be a matter of doubt; but those who, on scientific or other grounds, were inclined to minimize its importance could put forth plausible speculations about its nature which do not look so well under the light thrown by a more advanced science of Anthropology. It could be and it was suggested that the Neanderthal skeleton was that of a strayed idiot; that the characters of the skull were the result of early synostosis or of late gout; and, in fact, any stick was good enough to beat the dog withal.

As some writings of mine on the subject led to my occupation of a prominent position among the belabored dogs of that day, I have taken a mild interest in watching the gradual rehabilitation of my old friend of the Neanderthal among normal men, which has been going on of late years. It has come to be generally admitted that his remarkable cranium is no more than a strongly marked example of a type which occurs, not only among other prehistoric men, but is met with, sporadically, among the moderns; and that, after all, I was not so wrong as I ought to have been, when I indicated such points of similarity among the skulls found in our river beds and among the native races of Australia.* However, doubts still clung about the geo

* Evidence as lo Man's Place in Nature, 1863, p. 155.

logical age of the various deposits in which skul's of the Neanderthal type were subsequently found; and it was not until the year 1886 that two highly competent observers, Messrs. Fraipont and Lohest, the one an anatomist, the other a geologist, furnished us with evidence such as will bear severe criticism. At the mouth of a cave in the commune of Spy. in the Belgian province of Namur, Messrs. Fraipont and Lohest discovered two skeletons of the Neanderthal type; and the elaborate account of their investigations which they have published appears to me to leave little room for doubt that the men of Spy fabricated the palaeolithic implements, and were the contemporaries of the characteristic quaternary quadrupeds, found with them. The anatomical characters of the skeletons bear out conclusions which are not flattering to the appearance of the owners. They were short of stature but powerfully built, with strong, curiously curved, thigh bones, the lower ends of which are so fashioned that they must have walked with a bend at the knees. Their long depressed skulls had very strong brow ridges; their lower jaws, of brutal depth and solidity, sloped away from the teeth downward and backward, in consequence of the absence of that especially characteristic feature of the higher type of man, the chin prominence. Thus these skulls are not only eminently "Neanderthaloid" but they supply the proof that the parts wanting in the original specimen harmonized in lowness of type with the

rest.

After a very full discussion of the anatomical characters of these skulls, M. Fraipont says:

To sum up, we consider ourselves to be in a position to say that, having regard merely to the anatomical structure of the man of Spy, he possessed a greater number of pithecoid characters than any other race of mankind.*

And after enumerating these he continues :

The other and much more numerous characters of the skull, of the trunk, and of the limbs seem to be all human. Between the man of Spy and an existing anthropoid ape there lies an abyss.

Now that is pleasant reading for me, because, in 1863, I committed myself to

the assertion that the Neanderthal skull was the most pithecoid of human crania yet discovered," yet that "in no sense can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between men and apes" "* and "that the fossil remains of Man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is. "t

As the evidence stood seven and twenty years ago, in fact, it would have been imprudent to assume that the Neanderthal skull was anything but a case of sporadic reversion. But, in my anxiety not to overstate my case, I understated it. Neanderthaloid race is appreciably nearer, though the approximation is but slight. In the words of M. Fraipont:

66

The

But we

The distance which separates the man of Spy from the modern anthropoid ape is undoubtedly enormous; between the man of Spyand the Dryopithecus it is a little less. must be permitted to point out that if the man of the later quaternary age is the stock. whence existing races have sprung, he has travelled a very great way.

From the data now obtained, it is permis-. sible to believe that we shall be able to pursue the ancestral type of men and the anthropoid apes still further, perhaps as far as the eocene. and even beyond.‡

These conclusions hold good whatever the age of the men of Spy; but they posthink on the evidence must be admitted,. sess a peculiar interest if we admit, as I that these buman fossils are of pleistoceneage. For, after all due limitations, they give us some, however dim, insight into. the rate of evolution of the human species,. and indicate that it has not taken place at a much faster or slower pace than that of other mammalia, And if that is so, wa. are warranted in the supposition that the genus Homo, if not the species which the courtesy or the irony of naturalists has dubbed sapiens, was represented in pliocene, or even in miocene times. But I do not know by what osteological peculiarities

it could be determined whether the pliocene, or miocene, man was sufficiently sapient to speak or not ;* and whether, or not, he answered to the definition tional animal" in any higher sense than a dog or an ape does.

ra

There is no reason to suppose that the genus Homo was confined to Europe in the pleistocene age; it is much more probable that this, like other mammalian genera of that period, was spread over a large extent of the surface of the globe. At that time, in fact, the climate of regions nearer the equator must have been far more favorable to the human species; and it is possible that, under such conditions, it may have attained a higher development than in the north. As to where the genus Homo originated, it is impossible to form even a probable guess. During the miocene epoch, one region of the present temperate zones would serve as well as another. The elder Agassiz long ago tried to prove that the well-marked areas of geographical distribution of mammals have their special kinds of men; and, though this doctrine cannot be made good to the extent which Agassiz maintained; yet the limitation of the Australian type to New Holland, the approximate restriction of the negro type to Ultra-Saharal Africa and the peculiar character of the population of Central and South America, are facts which bear strongly in favor of the conclusion that the causes which have influenced the distribution of mammals in general, have powerfully affected that of man.

Let it be supposed that the human remaius from the caves of the Neanderthal and of Spy represent the race, or one of the races, of men who inhabited Europe in the quaternary epoch, can any connection be traced between it and existing races? That is to say, do any of them exhibit characters approximating those of the Spy men or other examples of the Neanderthaloid race? Put in the latter form, I think that the question may be safely answered in the affirmative. Skulls do occasionally approach the Neanderthaloid type, among both the brunet and the blond long-head

races. For the former, I pointed out the resemblance, long ago, in some of the Irish river-bed skulls. For the latter, evidence of various kinds may be adduced; but I prefer to cite the authority of one of the most accomplished and cautious of living anthropologists. Professor Virchow was led, by historical considerations, to think that the Teutonic type, if it still remained pure and undefiled anywhere, should be discoverable among the Frisians, in their ancient island homes on the North German coast, remote from the great movements of nations. In their tall stature and blond complexion the Frisians fulfilled expectation; but their skulls differed in some respects from those of the neighboring blond long-heads. The depression, or flattening (accompanied by a slight increase in breadth), which occurs occasionally among the latter, is regular and characteristic among the Frisians; and, in other respects, the Frisian skull unmistakably approaches the Neanderthal and Spy type.* The fact that this resemblance exists is of none the less importance because the proper interpretation of it is not yet clear. It may be taken to be a pretty sure indication of the physiological continuity of the blond long heads with the pleistocene Neanderthaloid men. But this continuity may have been brought about in two ways. The blond long heads may exhibit one of the lines of evolution of the men of the Neanderthaloid type. Or, the Frisians may be the result of the admixture of the blond long-heads with Neanderthaloid men; whose remains have been found at Canstatt and at Gibraltar, as well as at Spy and in the valley of the Neander; and who, therefore, seem, at one time, to have occupied a considerable area in Western Europe. The same alternatives present themselves when Neanderthaloid characters appear in skulls of other races. characters belong to a stage in the development of the human species, antecedent to the differentiation of any of the existing races, we may expect to find them in the lowest of these races, all over the world, and in the early stages of all races. I have

If these

* Virchow, Beiträge zur physischen Anthropologie der Deutschen (Abh. der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1876). See particularly p. 238 for the full recognition of the Neanderthaloid characters of Frisian skulls and of the ethnological significance of the similarity.

already referred to the remarkable similarity of the skulls of certain tribes of native Australians to the Neanderthal skull; and I may add, that the wide differences in height between the skulls of different tribes of Australians affords a parallel to the differences in altitude between the skulls of the men of Spy and those of the grave rows of North Germany. Neanderthaloid features are to be met with, not only in ancient long skulls; those of the ancient broad-headed people entombed at Borreby in Denmark have been often noted.

Reckoned by centuries, the remoteness of the quaternary, or pleistocene, age from our own is immense, and it is difficult to form an adequate notion of its duration.

Undoubtedly there is an abysmal difference between the Neanderthaloid race and the comely living specimens of the blond longheads with whom we are familiar. But the abyss of time between the period at which North Europe was first covered with ice, when savages pursued mammoths and scratched their portraits with sharp stones in central France, and the present day, ever widens as we learn more about the events which bridge it. And, if the differences between the Neanderthaloid men and ourselves could be divided into as many parts as that time contains centuries, the progress from part to part would probably be almost imperceptible.-Nineteenth Century.

EVER since the end of the last century the attention of Great Britain has been resolutely given to the opening up of Tropical Africa. For a long time our country would seem to have been impelled to this task by blind instincts of commercial expansion, and a great zeal for implanting among savage races her own ideas of religion and philanthropy, rather than by any definite and deliberate plan of extending her direct rule over Tropical Africa. Indeed at various times during the present century our Government has angrily disavowed any intentions of political aggrandisement in the Dark Continent, and has in a hundred instances blindly refused or contemptuously ignored invitations of negro princes and peoples to extend the sceptre of Britain over their countries. In fact, until quite recently, we owed very little to those who have held the reins of government in Great Britain for the position we occupied as an African Power. Whatever has occurred to strengthen our hold on the Dark Continent has been chiefly effected by traders and missionaries, who have continually brought about in an irregular fashion extensions of our Empire which the Central Government viewed with disfavor, and frequently tried to ignore or set aside. With the exception

of our original seizure of the Cape, our foundation of the Colony of Natal, and Lord Beaconsfield's annexation of the Transvaal (an act which was annulled by a subsequent Government), I can scarcely recall in the past any direct undertaking on the part of our Government in Africa which has been followed by a permanent and beneficial extension of British influence. It has always been with the most grudging unwillingness that the British Government has been forced by public opinion into any interposition in the affairs of Africa, and after spending money and men's lives in come costly enterprise, its anxiety to withdraw and have done with the whole thing-its desire to close its eyes. and push Africa on one side has been truly pathetic. We were the first, as a government, to send a surveying expedition to the River Congo, and for many decades our gun-boats policed that river, but as the result of all our work in that region our Government cheerfully acquiesced in the partition of the Congo Basin between Portugal, France, and Belgium. With many costly expeditions up from the Senegambian coast and up from the Bight of Benin and across the Sahara desert from Tripoli, the British Government alone of all European governments made the Niger