Classification of Pleistocene Strata by means of the Mammalia.—The late, middle, and early Pleistocene Divisions.—The Pleiocene Mammalia.—Summary of characteristic Pleiocene and Pleistocene Species.—Antiquity of Man in Europe.—Man lived in India in Pleistocene Age.—Are the PalÆolithic Aborigines of India related to those of Europe?—PalÆolithic Man lived in Palestine.—Conclusion.

The animals inhabiting the caves have been enumerated in the last three chapters, and we have discussed the inferences drawn from their distribution as to the pleistocene climate and geography of Europe. It remains for us now, in conclusion, to define the pleistocene, and to see in what relation it stands to the pleiocene period.

Classification of Pleistocene Strata by means of the Mammalia.

The pleistocene period was one of very long duration, and embraced changes of great magnitude in the geography of Europe, as we have seen in the ninth and tenth chapters. The climate, which in the preceding pleiocene age had been temperate in northern and middle Europe, at the beginning of the pleistocene gradually passed into the extreme arctic severity of the glacial period. This change caused a corresponding change of the forms of animal life; the pleiocene species, whose constitutions were adjusted to temperate or hot climates, yielding place to those which were better adapted to the new conditions. And since there is reason for the belief that it was not continuous in one direction, but that there were pauses or even reversions towards the old temperate state, it follows that the two groups of animals would at times overlap, and their remains be intermingled with each other. The frontiers also of each of the geographical provinces must naturally have varied with the season; and the competition for the same feeding-grounds between the invading and retreating forms must have been long, fluctuating, and severe. The passage, therefore, from the pleiocene to the pleistocene fauna might be expected to have been extremely gradual in each area. The lines of definition between the two are to a great extent arbitrary, instead of being marked with sufficient strength to constitute a barrier between the tertiary and post-tertiary groups of life of Lyell, or between the tertiary and quaternary of French geologists. The principle of classification which I have proposed267 is that offered by the gradual lowering of the temperature, which has left its mark in the advent of animals before unknown in Europe; and according to it I have divided the pleistocene deposits into three groups.

1. Those in which the pleistocene immigrants had begun to disturb the pleiocene mammalia, but had not yet supplanted the more southern animals. No arctic mammalia had as yet arrived. To this group belongs the forest-bed of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the deposit at St. Prest, near Chartres. 2. That in which the characteristic pleiocene deer had disappeared. The even-toed ruminants are principally represented by the stag, the Irish elk, the roe, bison, and urus. Elephas meridionalis and Rhinoceros etruscus had retreated to the south. To this group belong the brick-earths of the lower valley of the Thames, the river-deposit at Clacton, the cave of Baume in the Jura, and a river-deposit in Auvergne.

3. The third division is that in which the true arctic mammalia were among the chief inhabitants of the region; and to it belong most of the ossiferous caves and river-deposits in middle and northern Europe.

These three do not correspond with the preglacial, glacial, and postglacial divisions of the pleistocene strata, in central and north Britain; since there is reason to believe that all the animals which occupied Britain after the maximum cold had passed away, had arrived here in their southern advance before that maximum cold had been reached; or, in other words, were both pre- and postglacial.

This classification does not apply to pleistocene river-strata south of the Alps and Pyrenees, into which the arctic mammalia never penetrated.

The Late Pleistocene Division.

The late pleistocene division corresponds in part with the reindeer period of M. Lartet; but it comprehends also his other three periods; for the spotted hyÆna, the lion, the cave-bear, the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the bison, the reindeer, and the urus are so associated together in the caves and river deposits of Great Britain and the continent that they do not afford a means of classification. The arctic division of the mammalia, defined in the preceding chapter, was then in full possession of the area north of the Alps and Pyrenees, and the Rhinoceros megarhinus and Elephas meridionalis had disappeared. With three exceptions, to be noticed presently, all the ossiferous caverns of France, Germany, and Britain, belong to this division of the pleistocene.

The Middle Pleistocene Division.

The middle division of the pleistocene mammalia may now be examined, or that from which the characteristic pleiocene deer had vanished, and were replaced by the invading forms from the temperate zones of northern Asia. It is represented in Britain by the mammalia obtained from the lower brick-earths of the Thames valley, at Crayford, Erith, Ilford, and Gray’s Thurrock, by those from the deposit at Clacton, and most probably by those of the older deposit in Kent’s Hole, and by the Rhinoceros megarhinus of Oreston.268 They consist of—

Man, Homo.
Lion, Felis leo spelÆa.
Wild Cat, F. catus.
Spotted HyÆna, HyÆna crocuta var. spelÆa.
Grizzly Bear, Ursus ferox.
Brown Bear, U. arctos.
Wolf, Canis lupus.
Fox, C. vulpes.
Otter, Lutra vulgaris.
Urus, Bos primigenius.
Bison, Bison priscus.
Irish Elk, Cervus megaceros.
Stag, C. elaphus.
Brown’s Fallow Deer, C. Browni.
Roedeer, C. capreolus.
Musk Sheep, Ovibos moschatus.
Elephas antiquus.
Mammoth, E. primigenius.
Horse, Equus caballus.
Woolly Rhinoceros, Rhinoceros tichorhinus.
R. hemitoechus.
R. megarhinus.
Wild-boar, Sus scrofa.
Hippopotamus, Hippopotamus amphibius.
Beaver, Castor fiber.
Water-Rat, Arvicola amphibia. The discovery of a flint-flake in the undisturbed lower brick-earths of Crayford, by the Rev. O. Fisher, in the presence of the writer, in April 1872, proves that man was living while these fluviatile strata were being deposited.

If these mammalia be compared with those of the forest-bed or the pleiocene age on the one hand, and with the late pleistocene on the other, it will be seen that they are linked to the former by Rhinoceros megarhinus, and to the latter by the musk sheep. The presence of the latter, the most arctic of the herbivores, in such strange company is most abnormal, and suggests the idea that the remains belong to two distinct eras. The skull, however, which I found at Crayford in 1867, and presented to the Museum of the Geological Survey, rested in intimate association with the bones of other species, is in the same mineral state, and bears no marks of being a “derived fossil.” It is the only trace of the animal as yet obtained from the lower brick-earths.

The absence of the reindeer, so numerous in the valley of the Thames, while the late pleistocene strata were being accumulated by the river, and the abundance of remains of the stag, seem to me to point backwards rather than forwards in time, and to imply that the lower brick-earths are not of late pleistocene age; just as the absence of the characteristic early pleistocene species shows that they are not of that age. The evidence seems to be sufficient to establish a stage intermediate between the two. Nevertheless, it is sufficiently conflicting to cause Dr. Falconer to come to the conclusion that these strata are of pleiocene date, and Mr. Prestwich to believe that they belong to a late stage in the pleistocene. During the middle pleistocene, in the Thames valley, and at Clacton, the woolly rhinoceros, elephant, and mammoth competed for the same feeding-grounds with Rhinoceros hemitoechus, R. megarhinus, hippopotamus, and Elephas antiquus. Although all the characteristic pleiocene deer had retreated, the reindeer had not yet invaded that area: it was occupied by the stag, roe, the Irish elk, and Brown’s fallow deer. The whole assemblage of animals, the musk sheep being excepted, implies that the climate was less severe at this time, than when the reindeer spread over the same area in the late pleistocene age, and was far more numerous than the stag. It may, indeed, be objected that the classificatory value of the musk sheep is quite as great as that of Rhinoceros megarhinus; but in the case of the lower brick-earths, the evidence of the latter as to climate agrees with that of the whole assemblage of animals, while that of the former is altogether discordant.

There are no caves either in Britain or on the continent which can be referred with certainty to this middle division. The machairodus, however, of Kent’s Hole, and of the cavern of Baume in the Jura (see p. 337), and the megarhine species of rhinoceros from the fissures of Oreston, probably inhabited those regions, while the temperate group of animals held possession of the valley of the Thames, and of that now sunk beneath the North Sea.

The Early Pleistocene Mammalia.

The fossil mammalia must now be examined, which inhabited Great Britain during the early pleistocene period, and before the maximum severity of glacial cold had as yet been reached. The fossil bones from the forest-bed, which underlies the boulder-clay on the shores of Norfolk and Suffolk, have for many years attracted the attention of naturalists and geologists. The magnificent collections of the Rev. John Gunn, and the late Rev. S.W. King, gave Dr. Falconer the means of proving that the fauna of the ancient submerged forest differed from that of any geological period which we have hitherto discussed: and the careful diagnosis of all the fossils from this horizon which I have been able to meet with, shows that it was of a very peculiar character, being closely allied to the pleiocene of the south of France and of Italy, and yet possessing species which are undoubtedly pleistocene. The following list is necessarily very imperfect, since the fragmentary nature of the fossils renders a specific identification very hazardous; and it only includes those which I have been able to identify with any degree of certainty.

Sorex moschatus.
S. vulgaris.
Talpa EuropÆa.
Trogontherium Cuvieri.
Castor fiber.
Ursus spelÆus.
U. arvernensis.
Canis lupus.
C. vulpes.
Machairodus.
Cervus megaceros.
C. capreolus.
C. elaphus.
Cervus Polignacus.
C. carnutorum.
C. verticornis.
C. Sedgwickii.
Bos primigenius.
Hippopotamus major.
Sus scrofa.
Equus caballus.
Rhinoceros etruscus.
R. megarhinus.
Elephas meridionalis.
E. antiquus.
E. primigenius.

From the examination of this list, the peculiar mixture of pleiocene and pleistocene species is evident. The Ursus arvernensis, Cervus Polignacus, Hippopotamus major, Rhinoceros etruscus, and R. megarhinus, the horse, Elephas meridionalis, and E. antiquus were living in the pleiocene age in France and Italy, and probably in Norfolk. The cave-bear, the wolf, fox, mole, beaver, Irish elk, roe, stag, urus, wild-boar, and the mammoth have not as yet been discovered in the continental pleiocenes, as judged by the standards offered by the Val d’Arno and Southern France. They are more or less abundant in the late pleistocene age. This singular association seems to me to imply that the fauna of the forest-bed is intermediate between the two, and, from the fact that only three out of the whole series, viz. Ursus arvernensis, Rhinoceros etruscus, and Cervus Polignacus, are peculiar to the continental pleiocene, that it is more closely allied to the pleistocene than to the pleiocene.

It is also very probable that this early pleistocene age was of considerable duration; for in it we find at least two forms (and the number will probably be very largely increased) which are unknown in continental Europe, although pleiocene and pleistocene strata have been diligently examined in France and Germany. The very presence of the Cervus Sedgwickii and C. verticornis implies that the lapse of time was sufficiently great to allow of the evolution of forms of animal life hitherto unknown, and which disappeared before the middle and late pleistocene stages. The Trogontherium also, as well as the Cervus carnutorum, both of which occur in the forest-bed and in the gravel-beds of St. Prest, near Chartres, and which are peculiar to this horizon, point to the same conclusion.

The deer of the forest-bed, in this list, do not represent approximately the number of species: there are at least five, and perhaps six, represented by a series of antlers, which I do not venture to quote, because I have not been able to compare them with those of the pleiocenes of the Val d’Arno, of Marseilles, or of Auvergne.

Dr. Falconer pointed out that one of the peculiar characters of the fauna of the forest-bed is the presence of the mammoth; and the evidence on which he considered the animal to be of preglacial age in Europe has been fully verified by the molars from Bacton, which are now in the Manchester Museum. They are associated with Elephas meridionalis and E. antiquus, and are incrusted with precisely the same matrix as the teeth and bones of those species.

No caves have been discovered containing this peculiar assemblage of fossil animals.

The Pleiocene Mammalia.

The relation of the pleistocene to the pleiocene fauna is a question of very great difficulty, because the latter has not yet been satisfactorily defined, although Prof. Gervais and Dr. Falconer have given the more important species from Auvergne, Montpellier, and the Val d’Arno. The following list is taken from Prof. Gervais’s great work “Zoologie et PalÉontologie FranÇaises,” p. 349, the term pseudo-pleiocene merely implying that the fauna differs from that of the marine deposit of Montpellier, which he takes as his standard.

Pseudo-pleiocene of Issoire.

Hystrix refossa.
Castor issiodorensis.
Arctomys antiqua.
Arvicola robustus.
Cervus pardinensis.
C. arvernensis.
C. causanus.
Sus arvernensis.
Lepus Lacosti.
Mastodon arvernensis.
Tapirus arvernensis.
Rhinoceros elatus?
Bos elatus.
Cervus polycladus.
C. ardens.
C. cladocerus.
C. issiodorensis.
C. Perrieri.
C. etueriarum.
Ursus arvernensis.
Canis borbonidus.
Felis pardinensis.
F. arvernensis.
F. brevirostris.
F. issiodorensis.
Machairodus cultridens.
HyÆna arvernensis.
H. Perrieri.
Lutra Bravardi.

To these animals Dr. Falconer269 adds Hippopotamus major, Elephas antiquus, and Rhinoceros megarhinus, and he identifies Rhinoceros elatus with his new species Rhinoceros etruscus. Prof. Gaudry agrees with me in the belief that HyÆna Perrieri is identical with H. striata or the striped species.

Prof. Gervais also identifies the Equus robustus of M. Pomel, from the same locality, with the common Horse, Equus fossilis.

The fauna of Montpellier is certainly very different from that of Issoire; but since it is neither meiocene nor pleistocene, it must belong to one of the intermediate stages of the pleiocene. It includes

Semnopithecus monspessulanus.
Macacus priscus.
Chalicomys sigmodus.
Lagomys loxodus.
Mastodon brevirostris.
Rhinoceros megarhinus.
Tapirus minor.
Antilope Cordieri.
A. hastata.
Cervus Cuvieri.
C. australis.
Sus provincialis.
HyÆnodon insignis.
HyÆna ——?
Machairodus.
Felis Christolii.
Lutra affinis. The Mastodon brevirostris of this list is considered by Dr. Falconer to be identical with M. arvernensis of MM. Croiset and Jobert.

The fauna of the Val d’Arno differs from that of Montpellier and of Auvergne, and yet is considered by Dr. Falconer to be eminently typical of the European pleiocene.270 The animals identified by him in the museums of Italy are as follow:—

Felis.
HyÆna.
Machairodus cultridens.
Mastodon arvernensis.
M. Borsoni.
Elephas antiquus.
Elephas meridionalis.
Rhinoceros etruscus.
R. megarhinus.
R. hemitoechus.
Hippopotamus major.

All these animals, with the exception of Rhinoceros hemitoechus, have been discovered in the pseudo-pleiocene of Issoire, while the megarhine rhinoceros and Mastodon arvernensis are the only two which have been obtained from the marine sands of Montpellier. The pleiocene animals, therefore, inhabiting Northern Italy are more closely allied to those of Auvergne than to those of Montpellier.

If these three localities be taken as typical of the pleiocene strata, we shall find that several of the species range as far north as Britain, and occur in deposits which from the evidence of the mollusca, have been assigned to that age. Mastodon arvernensis, Elephas meridionalis, and Ursus arvernensis, have been obtained from the old land-surface which underlies the sand and shingle of the Norfolk Crag, in company with many forms of deer and antelopes which have not yet been identified, while the Hipparion is found in the marine crags of Suffolk. The animals which especially characterize the pleiocene strata of Europe are Machairodus cultridens, Mastodon arvernensis and M. Borsoni, besides the genus Tapir.

If this fauna be compared with that of the preglacial forest-bed, it will be seen that the difference between them is very great. The pleiocene mastodon, tapir, the majority of the deer, and the antelopes are replaced by forms such as the roe and the red-deer, unknown up to that time. Nevertheless many of the pleiocene animals were able to hold their ground against the pleistocene invaders, although, subsequently, as I have already shown, they disappeared one by one, being ultimately beaten in the struggle for life by the new comers. The progress of this struggle has been used in the preceding pages as a means of classification. This fauna has not been discovered in any cave.

Summary of Characteristic Pleistocene and Pleiocene Species.

The following are the salient points of the pleistocene age offered by the study of the land mammalia in the area north of the Alps and Pyrenees.

The Pleistocene Period.

A.—The latest stage.

PalÆolithic Man.
Woolly Rhinoceros, abundant.
Mammoth, abundant.
Reindeer, abundant.
Stag, comparatively rare.
Northern forms of life in full possession of area north of Alps and Pyrenees.

B.—The middle stage.

PalÆolithic Man.
Machairodus latidens.
Stag, abundant.
Northern forms of life present, but not in force.
Rhinoceros megarhinus, still living.
Woolly Rhinoceros, present.

C.—The early stage.

The following are animals peculiar to this stage:—

Trogontherium Cuvieri.
Cerus verticornis.
Cervus Sedgwickii.
C. carnutorum.

The following make their appearance:—The beaver, musk-shrew, cave-bear, roe, stag, Irish elk, urus, and bison, wild-boar, horse, (2), mammoth, wolf, and fox.

The pleiocene Ursus arvernensis, Cervus Polignacus, Rhinoceros etruscus, and Elephas meridionalis still living.

The Pleiocene.

Mastodon arvernensis.
M. Borsoni.
Hipparion gracile.
No living species of European Deer.

The three subdivisions of the pleistocene do not apply to the region south of the Alps and Pyrenees, because the northern group of animals did not pass into Spain and Italy. In these two countries we find southern and pleiocene animals living throughout the pleistocene age, which in France and Britain lived only in the two earlier stages.

Antiquity of Man in Europe.

No remains have been discovered up to the present time in any part of Europe which can be referred with certainty to a higher antiquity than the pleistocene age. The palÆolithic people or peoples arrived in Europe along with the peculiar fauna of that age, and after dwelling here for a length of time, which is to be measured by the vast physical and climatal changes, described in the last three chapters, finally disappeared, leaving behind as their representatives the Eskimos tribes of arctic America. There is no evidence that they were inferior in intellectual capacity to many of the lower races of the present time, or more closely linked to the lower animals. The traces which they have left behind tell us nothing as to the truth or falsehood of the doctrine of evolution, for if it be maintained on the one hand, that the first appearance of man as a man, and not as a man-like brute, is inconsistent with that doctrine, it may be answered that the lapse of time between his appearance in the pleistocene age and the present day, is too small to have produced appreciable physical or intellectual change. Also, it must not be forgotten, that we have merely investigated the antiquity of the sojourn of man in Europe, and not the general question of his first appearance on the earth, with which it is very generally confounded. Dr. Falconer well remarked that the origines of mankind are to be sought, not in Europe, but in the tropical regions, probably of Asia. To these we have no clue in the present stage of the inquiry. The higher apes are represented in the European meiocene and pleiocene strata, by extinct forms uniting in some cases the characters of different living species, but they do not show any tendency to assume human characters. It must indeed be allowed, that the study of fossil remains throws as little light as the documents of history on the relation of man to the lower animals. The historian commences his labours with the high civilization of Assyria and Egypt, and can merely guess at the steps by which it was achieved; the palÆontologist meets with the traces of man in the pleistocene strata, and he too can merely guess at the antecedent steps by which man arrived even at that culture which is implied by the implements. The latter has proved that the antiquity of man is greater than the former had supposed. Neither has contributed anything towards the solution of the problem of his origin.

Man lived in India in Pleistocene Age.

The researches of the Geological Surveyors has shown that in ancient times man, in the same stage of civilization as the palÆolithic man of Europe, lived in Southern India and in the valley of the NarbadÁ. In 1868271 Mr. Bruce Foote described the flint implements which were discovered over a large area in the districts of Madras, either in the red clayey deposit known as Laterite, or in such positions as implied that they had been washed out of it. They all belong to the same rude types as those of the pleistocene strata of North-western Europe. A small fragment of bone was the only fossil which had up to that time been discovered in the Laterite, and this I was able to identify in 1869 as a portion of a human tibia of the abnormal platycnemic variety, which has been described in the fifth chapter of this work, from the European caves and tombs. The Lateritic deposits themselves are strictly analogous to our river-strata and brick-earths in their constitution, and in their resting at various levels above the sea, and were, as Mr. Foote remarks, formed under conditions different to those which are now going on in that district. They prove that the period of the sojourn of palÆolithic man in Southern India is divided from the present day by considerable geographical changes, such as the elevation of land, and the erosion and breaking up of accumulations which were once continuous. We have seen that somewhat similar changes have happened in Europe, in the interval which separates the palÆolithic period from our own time.

The discovery of a rudely chipped implement of quartzite, of the pointed oval shape common in the gravels of Britain and France, published by Mr. Medlicott in 1873, in the “Records of the Geological Survey of India,” proves further that man was a member of the remarkable fauna which inhabited the valley of the NarbadÁ in ancient times. It was dug out of reddish unstratified clay by Mr. Hacket at a depth of three feet from the upper surface, which was covered by twenty feet of ossiferous gravel, on the left bank of the NarbadÁ near the valley of Bhutra. The clay belongs to the same fluviatile series as that from which the mammalia were obtained and named by Dr. Falconer in 1828. Both clay and gravel are shown to be of fluviatile origin, by the presence of fresh-water mussels of the varieties still living in the adjacent river.

The fossil bones belong to extinct and living animals. Among the former are two kinds of elephant (E. namadicus) and (E. stegodon insignis), one of which is closely allied to the European E. antiquus, two species of hippopotamus, one (H. palÆindicus) with four incisors in front of the jaws like the African, and a second with six incisors belonging to the extinct division of hexaprotodon, a large ox (Bos namadicus), a deer and a bear. The living forms are represented by the buffalo (Bubalus namadicus), which is identical with the wild arnee from which the Indian domestic buffaloes have descended, and the gavial, or long-snouted Gangetic crocodile. This imperfect list, borrowed from Dr. Falconer,272 shows that there is the same mixture of extinct with living forms in the valley of the Ganges, while the clays and gravels were being accumulated, as we have observed in the pleistocene deposits of Europe, and the fauna may therefore be referred to the pleistocene age, and probably, as Mr. Medlicott proposes, to the late division of that age. The exact correspondence of the quartzite implements with those which are so abundant in the European river-strata of the same age, adds additional weight to this conclusion.

Are the PalÆolithic Aborigines of India related to those of Europe?

It is not a little remarkable that Dr. Falconer, writing in 1865 of the peculiar fauna of the NarbadÁ, should have held the view that man was living in India at that time, and that the memory of the hippopotamus was handed down in Aryan traditions, under the striking name of the water elephant. “After reflecting,” he writes, “on the question during many years in its palÆontological and ethnological bearings, my leaning is to the view that Hippopotamus namadicus was extinct in India long before the Aryan invasion, but that it was familiar to the earlier indigenous races.” (ii. p. 644.) This inference is proved to be literally true by the discovery of the palÆolithic implements in the ossiferous strata of the NarbadÁ, which must have required long ages for their accumulation and subsequent erosion.

We may, therefore, conclude that palÆolithic man inhabited both Europe and India in the pleistocene age. And possibly the identity of the implements, in these two remote regions, may be accounted for in the same manner as the identity of Aryan root-words, by the view that their fabricators may have come from the same centre of dispersal, by the same routes as those which were subsequently used by the pre-Aryan, and Aryan, invaders of Europe and India. But whether this be accepted or not, it cannot be denied that the man who inhabited both these regions was in the same rude stage of human progress, and played his part in the same life-era.

PalÆolithic Man lived in Palestine.

The discovery, by the AbbÉ Richard,273 of a palÆolithic flint implement, of the ordinary river-bed type, on the surface of a stratum of gravel between Mount Tabor and the lake of Tiberias, lends great weight to the view that the Aborigines of India and Europe, whose implements are found in the deposits of rivers, migrated from the same centre, since it bridges over the great interval of space by which they were isolated. It is very probable, that future discoveries may reveal the presence of a tolerably uniform priscan population, in the pleistocene age, throughout this vast area: which as yet has only been explored by archÆologists in a few isolated points, with the important results recorded in the preceding pages.

Conclusion.

It now remains for us to sum up the results of the exploration of European caves, of which an imperfect outline has been given in this work. Their formation, and filling up, have an important bearing on the physical geography of the districts in which they occur, and reveal the great changes which are going on, in the calcareous rocks, at the present time. The study of the remains which they contain has led to the recognition of the fact, that the climate and geography of Europe, in ancient times, were altogether different from those of the present day.

It has also made large additions to the history of the sojourn of man in Europe. We find a hunting and fishing race of cave-dwellers, in the remote pleistocene age, in possession of France, Belgium, Germany, and Britain, probably of the same stock as the Eskimos, living and forming part of a fauna, in which northern and southern, living and extinct, species are strangely mingled with those now living in Europe. In the neolithic age caves were inhabited, and used for tombs, by men of the Iberian or Basque race, which is still represented by the small, dark-haired, peoples of western Europe. They were rarely used in the bronze age. When we arrive within the borders of history in Britain, we find them offering shelter to the Brit-Welsh flying from their enemies after the ruin of the Roman empire, and throwing great light on the fragmentary records of those obscure times. In treating of these questions, it has been necessary to discuss problems of deep and varied interest to the ethnologist, physicist, and historian, some of which have been partially solved, while others await the light of the higher knowledge which will be the fruit of a wider experience.