on being
wholly in the hands of the geologists.

Then, the bone of an Irish elk, according to one view (but _not_
according to another), gives us a second fact. A rib, with an oval
opening, where oval openings should not be, and with an irregular
effusion of callus around it, is found under eleven feet of peat. Dr.
Hart attributes this to a sharp-pointed instrument, wielded by a human
hand, which without penetrating deep enough to cause death, effected a
breach on the continuity of the bone, and caused inflammation to be set
up. But Professor Owen thinks that a weapon of the kind in question, if
left in, to be worked out by the _vix medicatrix_ of Nature, would be
fatal, and consequently he prefers the notion of the wound having been
inflicted by a weapon which was quickly withdrawn, _e.g._, the horn of
some combative rival of its own kind, rather than the human. Now if it
be a difficult matter to say what will, and what will not kill a man in
the year '52, much more so is it to speak chirurgically about Irish elks
of the Pleiocene period. Hence the evidence of man having been
cotemporary with the Megaceros Hibernicus is unsatisfactory.

That a certain amount, then, of change of level between the land and
sea, in a certain part of Scotland, has taken place since Scotchmen
first hunted whales is the chief fact, relative to the date of our
introduction, that we get from geology. From archaeology we learn
something more. Those sepulchral monuments which have the clearest and
most satisfactory signs of antiquity, contain numerous implements of
stone and bone, _but none of metal_. When metal is found, the
concomitant characters of the tomb in which it occurs, indicate a later
period. If so, it is a fair inference for the ethnological archaeologist
to conclude, that although the earliest colonists reached Britain late
enough to avail themselves of boats, their migration was earlier than
the diffusion of the arts of metallurgy. And this has induced the best
investigators to designate the earliest stage in British ethnology by
the name of the STONE PERIOD, a technical and convenient term.

It is the general opinion, that during this period the practice of
inhumation, or simple burial, was commoner than that of cremation or
burning, though each method was adopted. Over the remains disposed of by
the former process, were erected mounds of earth (_tumuli_ or
_barrows_), heaps of stone (_cairns_), or cromlechs. There are strong