and teeth early man in Britain was certainly more
skilful than his successor; but he was a very inferior type of the human
race, yet his intelligence and mode of life have been deemed not lower
than those of the Australian aborigines.

The animals which roamed through the country in this Pleistocene period
were the elk and reindeer, which link us on to the older and colder
period when Arctic conditions prevailed; the Irish deer, a creature of
great size whose head weighed about eighty pounds; bison, elephant,
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lion, wolf, otter, bear, horse, red deer, roe,
urus or gigantic ox, the short-horned ox (_bos longifrons_), boar,
badger and many others which survive to the present day, and have
therefore a very long line of ancestors.

The successor of the old stone implement maker was Neolithic man, to
whom we have already had occasion to refer. Some lengthy period of
geological change separates him from his predecessor of the Old Stone
Age. Specimens of his handiwork show that he was a much more civilised
person than his predecessor, and presented a much higher type of
humanity. He had a peculiarly shaped head, the back part of the skull
being strangely prolonged; and from this feature he is called
_dolichocephalic_. He was small in stature, about 5 feet 6 inches in
height, having a dark complexion, and his descendants are the Iberian or
Basque races in the Western Pyrenees and may still be traced in parts of
Ireland and Wales. The long barrows or mounds, the length of which is
greater than the breadth, contain his remains, and we find traces of his
existence in all the western countries of Europe.

He had made many discoveries which were unknown to his Old Stone
predecessor. Instead of always hunting for his food, like an animal, he
found out that the earth would give him corn with which he could make
bread, if only he took the trouble to cultivate it. Instead of always
slaying animals, he found that some were quite ready to be his servants,
and give him milk and wool and food. He brought with him to our shores
cows and sheep and goats, horses and dogs. Moreover he made pottery,
moulding the clay with his hand, and baking it in a fire. He had not
discovered the advantages of a kiln. He could spin thread, and weave
stuffs, though he usually wore garments of skins.

His dwellings were no longer the caves and forests, for he made for
himself rude pit huts, and surrounded himself, his tribe, and catt