Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/361

Rh fossil shells and bones, and thought with Dr. Martin Lister, that they might be "the efforts of some plastic power, in the earth, being the regular workings of Nature, whereby she sometimes seems to sport and play, and make little flourishes and imitations of things, to set off and embellish her more useful structures."



But, since the discoveries in the Somme Valley were recognized, a flood of light has been shed upon the subject. These dry bones live, and these rude stones are found to be useful, indeed indispensable, materials for building up the earliest history of the human race. The savants of every country in Europe have hastened to take part in an inquiry so novel and so interesting; many volumes of memoirs have been written; our French neighbors, with their usual vivacity, have



established a journal devoted to prehistoric archæology, as well as an annual Congrés; and these researches having been for several years conducted by so many able and eager observers, we need not wonder that Mr. Evans, having studied the whole bibliography of the subject, both ancient and modern, and explored every considerable museum or collection, is now enabled to produce this encyclopædia of the new-born science, which for want of a better word may, perhaps, be called petrology or petro-tomology. He has introduced us into the workshops and armories of our most remote predecessors, it may be of our ancestors, as they existed not at any particular epoch, but in