the least important is that which relates to the conditions under which the European stone implements are found. In the Palæolithic period, "man shared the possession of Europe with the mammoth, the cave-bear, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and other extinct animals;" and with the remains of these are found chipped axes and other implements that appear to be characteristic of that period. The geologist does not necessarily suggest contemporaneity when he describes in different parts of the globe the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene deposits; and it is in a similar manner and with the like results that the archæologist should work. To bring into complete harmony the several stages of growth, whether ancient or modern, which have their records in the rocks or in the works of man, one must forget Time, and, in the first attempts at classification, viewing the whole earth, look for resemblances and differences in the things themselves, rather than seek to ascertain which of them were formed contemporaneously.
A careful consideration of the condition of savages in all parts of the globe tends rather to support the conclusions of Sir J. Lubbock, and to suggest their extension beyond the limits he has marked out than to invalidate them. He made undoubtedly a step of the highest importance in the advancement of a science that but yesterday—as it were—had no existence when he suggested the division above referred to; and a patient study of the evidence he has collected shows unmistakably that his method is but the beginning of a classification that will have results of the highest importance to mankind.
It is proper to call attention to the fact that no works of art have been found in the recent drifts of Victoria, and these drifts have been largely and widely explored by gold-miners. Was Australia unpeopled during the ages that preceded the formation of the gravels that form low terraces in every valley, and the beds of soft volcanic ash that yet cover grass-grown surfaces? If peopled, why do we not find some evidence—a broken stone tomahawk or a stone spear-head—in some of the most recent accumulations? Their stone implements are not found in caves or in the mud of lagoons with the bones of the gigantic marsupials, or any of the now extinct predaceans that have their living representatives in the island of Tasmania. The bones of the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus ursinus), the great kangaroo (Macropus Titan), the Thylacoleo, the Nototherium, and the Diprotodon, and those of a reptile (Megalania prisca) allied to the lace lizards of Australia, are found abundantly in mud flats in various parts of Australia; but nothing has been discovered to show that the continent was inhabited by man when these now well-preserved relics were clothed with flesh, and the animals were feeding on the plains and in the streams which were as well fitted then as now, as shown by the fruits and seeds that have been discovered, to afford the means of support to a savage people.
What was the condition of Australia when the flint implement makers of the drift period were living? Probably an unpeopled tract, where the then nearly extinct volcanoes shed at times over the landscape a feeble light, and the lion gnawing the bones of a kangaroo was watched with jackall-like eyes by the native dog, ready to eat up such scraps as his powerful enemy might leave
