PREHISTORIC ARCHEOLOGY.
In a time which is within the memory of men not yet old the study of PREHISTORIC ARCH,EOLOGY (from the Greek dpra7K, ancient, and a discourse) has established its claim to be called a science.
Down to the middle of this century the rude objects of ancient art were regarded as mere curiosities, suitable to the cabinet of a but of little or no importance to the serious student of history. Now, however, it has been discovered that they throw an unexpected light on the earliest condition of the human race, that they are the mute witnesses of a period of its existence far longer than that which comes within the scope of written records, and that they supply us the means of tracing man back almost to his first appearance on this globe, and of following him in his conquests over Nature clown to the time when history takes up the thread of his career.
Historical Sketch.—The fact that relics of man's industry are occasion ally found in undisturbed contiguity to the bones of strange, unknown, or extinct animals came to the knowledge of intelligent observers long before they appreciated the significance of this relation. Thus, there may still be seen in the British Museum a rude stone spear-head which, about the year 1715, was dug out of the gravel on which most of the city of London stands; this spear-bead was found in close juxtaposition to the bones of a fossil elephant. Again, early in the present century an English gentleman of Suffolk found in a fresh-water formation near Hoxne in that shire a number of rude flint implements also associated with elephant bones. These discoveries excited some vague comment at the time, but were not supposed to be of any general interest. Iu 1S28 and 1S29 two French gentlemen, M. Journal of Narbonne and M. Christol of Mont pellier, published articles stating that they had discovered remains of human art and fragments of human skeletons in caves in the south of France, undoubtedly coeval with bones of long-extinct quadrupeds. But
the eminent palaeontologist Cuvier threw the weight of his great authority against these assertions, declaring that man belonged solely to the very latest geological period. Meanwhile, a Belgian physician, Dr. Schuler ling of Liege, was, at great expense and infinite trouble, exploring on his own account the caverns in the valley of the Meuse and its tributaries, and in 1833 he published to the world unquestionable evidence that in many of these primitive shelters articles of human workmanship were exhumed, in original deposition with the remains of animals which had become extinct long anterior to the earliest lines of recorded history. In the same year Thomsen, a Danish antiquary, published an excellent arti cle on the stone implements of the ancient inhabitants of Denmark and Scandinavia.
These scattered efforts attracted no attention in the scientific world, and it was not until the French antiquary M. Boucher de Perthes pub lished, in 1847, the results of his observations carried on during the seven preceding years in the gravel-beds of the Somme River, that the doctrine laid down by Cuvier was seriously questioned. M. de Perthes declared that in these gravel-beds he had collected large numbers of flint tools of antique patterns in immediate connection with the remains of the mam moth and other extinct quadrupeds, under conditions which left no other inference possible than that the manufacturers of these tools lived at the same period as the animals. M. de Perthes' views were supported by the researches of Dr. Rigollot in the same river-valley near the village of St. Acheul, close to Amiens.
About the same date Professor \Vorsaae of Denmark gave to the scien tific public the results of his admirable investigations into the so-called or old refuse-heaps, along the shores of Denmark, refer ring the oldest of them to an age long preceding that to which the received chronology assigns the creation of man.