Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/70

 56 that the description of these ammonites as coiling or uncoiling themselves has reference only to growth of the shell, and not to any conscious effort in the lifetime of any individual specimen, although this distinction would hardly suggest itself to our remote ancestors. But I understand that one of the most recent theories has reference to what I may call the possession of a terminable life-history by a genus, which is regarded as normally following a course roughly analogous to the birth, life, and death of an individual. The question here naturally suggests itself: Is it conceivable that early man, considering the extent to which his faculties must have been absorbed in the struggle for existence, should have paid any attention whatever to such things as fossils? Whatever may or may not be conceivable, there is, I think, unmistakable evidence that he did. In the first place, General Pitt-Rivers, during his excavations at Rotherly (Wilts) and Woodcuts (Dorset) reported that he came upon an altogether unnatural number of the flint echinoderms or sea-urchins in the surface soil, as well as in the pit-dwellings themselves. His conclusion was that these fossils, being conspicuous, must have been noticed by the early inhabitants of the villages, who had evidently collected them with great industry, and his purely provisional suggestion was that these fossils were used as a species of currency. There are, however, better reasons for thinking that they were employed as almost any very odd-looking stones to this day would be used by less civilized races in all parts of the world, i.e. on account of some fancied magical virtue. One fact distinctly pointing in this direction is given by Sir B. C. A. Windle, in his Remains of the Prehistoric Age in England, where there is an illustration showing the plan of a double interment in a round barrow on Dunstable Downs, where a triple row of chalk echinoderms runs completely round the interment.