Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/120

108 in diminished numbers; and that in some of the caves, such, for instance, as those in the neighborhood of Mentone, there may be traces of his existence during the transitional period that connects the palæolithic and neolithic ages. If this were really the case, we might expect to find some traces of a dissemination of neolithic culture from a north Italian center, but I much doubt whether any such traces actually exist. If it had been in that part of the world that the transition took place, how are we to account for the abundance of polished stone hatchets found in central India? Did neolithic man return eastward by the same route as that by which in remote ages his palæolithic predecessor had migrated westward? Would it not be in defiance of all probability to answer such a question in the affirmative? We have, it must be confessed, nothing of a substantial character to guide us in these speculations; but, pending the advent of evidence to the contrary, we may, I think, provisionally adopt the view that owing to failure of food, climatal changes, or other causes, the occupation of western Europe by palæolithic man absolutely ceased, and that it was not until after an interval of long duration that Europe was repeopled by a race of men immigrating from some other part of the globe where the human race had survived, and in course of ages had developed a higher stage of culture than that of palæolithic man.

I have been carried away by the liberty allowed for conjecture into the regions of pure imagination, and must now return to the realms of fact, and one fact on which I desire for a short time to insist is that of the existence at the present day, in close juxtaposition with our own civilization, of races of men who—at all events but a few generations ago—lived under much the same conditions as did our own neolithic predecessors in Europe. The manners and customs of these primitive tribes and peoples are changing day by day, their languages are becoming obsolete, their myths and traditions are dying out, their ancient processes of manufacture are falling into oblivion, and their numbers are rapidly diminishing, so that it seems inevitable that ere long many of these interesting populations will become absolutely extinct. The admirable Bureau of Ethnology instituted by our neighbors in the United States of America has done much toward preserving a knowledge of the various native races in this vast continent; and here in Canada the annual Archæological Reports presented to the Minister of Education are rendering good service in the same cause. Moreover, the committee of this association appointed to investigate the physical characters, languages, and industrial and social conditions of the northwestern tribes of the Dominion of Canada is about to present its twelfth and final report, which, in conjunction with those already presented,