The anthropological review - National Library of Scotland

86 NOTES ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
actly corresponds to the centre of the ellipse, the instrument then
gradually diminishes on all sides. He had seen flints broken by acci-
dent either by the hand of man or other violent action, but had never
seen forms like those presented. Certainly, if the object were
polished, it might be compared to the best works of a later period.
This particular form extends to a large number of the implements,
and the picturesque name " langues de chat" given to them by the
miners shows that they have been struck by their regular forms.
The objection that the surfaces are rugous appeared to him without
much value. The first men possessed no metallic engines requisite to
polish hard stones, an art but slowly developed. Even hatchet No. 4,
found by Boucher de Perthes in a Celtic sepulture, the authenticity of
which is undoubted, still presents a rugous surface, and appears to
have been produced by simple percussion, like the implements of the
diluvium.
M. Lagneau. It would be of the highest interest to determine the
period in which the race of men lived who fabricated the implements
found at Abbeville and St. Acheul. The race was, no doubt, anterior
to the Celtic epoch ; and may be anterior to the so-called original race
which preceded the Gauls and Celts in western Europe. The race of
the ancient Britons, of which the English anthropologists have found
traces in the British Isles, and which Dr. Ware of Edinburgh, from a
passage of Tacitus and other documents, considers of Iberian origin,
had been supplanted and destroyed by the Celts. Is it by this an-
tique race, which probably had also occupied the north of France,
that the diluvian hatchets had been worked ? Was it not rather to a
still older race, with narrow crania and a sharp facial angle, such
as have been found by Mr. Spring in the environs of Namur, that they
must be attributed ?
M. Castelnau still objects. Let it be remembered that flints for
firearms were formerly fabricated by mere percussion, by which they
received a perfectly regular form. Even at this day, savage nations,
ignorant of the use of metals, produce stone implements, which may
be considered as masterpieces compared with the objects found in the
diluvium. He persists, therefore, in his opinion, that if these flints
are really the work of man, the race which fabricated them must have
been much inferior to the present race.
M. Broca is disposed to admit with M. Castelnau that an ante-
historic race, of which Boucher de Perthes has discovered the traces,
was much inferior to the succeeding races, and probably inferior to
any existing, though it be somewhat difiicult to conceive a human