advance in culture, and consequently their implements exhibit a greater variety than those of the "river-drift men." These consist of arrow-heads, javelin-heads, awls, pins, and needles. They caught birds in snares, lived largely on fish, had fur clothes, stitched by needles with sinews, obtained fire by rubbing wood, and had no domestic animals.1 Professor Boyd Dawkins says of this latter race: "It may be gathered that the Eskimos are probably the representatives of the cave-men, and protected within the Arctic circle from those causes by which they have been driven from Europe and Asia. They stand at the present day wholly apart from all other races, and are cut off from all both by the philologer and the craniologist. Unaccustomed to war themselves, they were probably driven from Europe and Asia by other tribes, in the same manner as within the last century they have been driven farther north by the attacks of the Red Indian."2

It may with certainty be said that there are three stages through which mankind must have passed on their way towards a tribal society the hunting, the pastoral, the agricultural. The outstanding feature of the river-drift and cave-men is the nomadic one; but, "man is a social being," and society even in its primitive form is a necessity for self-defence and protection. On the way towards this, or rather in the very effort to realise the contents of his own nature, there was a long development, in which we find man endeavouring to rise superior to his environment; and in his progress in art and agriculture, science has defined three stages, as the Stone, the Bronze, and the Iron Ages. These are not necessarily chronological: they may coexist side by side; they may be different strata in the same period; still the division is helpful, and intelligible as long as we regard it as a succession of different stages in culture or civilisation. This classification has introduced the prin

1 See succinct account in 'Scotland in Prehistoric Times,' by Charles Annandale, M.A., LL.D.

2 Early Man in Early Britain, p. 242.

3 Politics, ch. i.

ciple of order into archæology, and enabled it as a science to be treated in the line of organic development. By examining the monuments and relics of the three periods we are able to arrive at an intelligent idea of the life of early man.

In prehistoric times the climate would be much damper and more moist than at present; the country would be covered with large forests and continuous morasses; in fact, Strathearn, in the east end of which Abernethy is situated, would be one continuous marsh, with forests on either side of it and intersecting it. The reindeer and elk, with other large animals, would be roaming through them, and it is only when we compare lovely Strathearn of to-day with Strathearn as it then existed, that we can understand what advances man has made, and appreciate the initial endeavours that led to such great results. The first people of whom anything definite is known, are those of the neolithic stage in the Stone Age. Their relics are called neolithic because they are polished, and of these many fine specimens from Abernethy are to be seen in the Museum at Edinburgh. They are mostly arrow-heads, and reveal to us a race of men who lived by hunting, and probably were frequently at war with each other. The work of this primitive man reveals capacity, and probably at this stage communities were formed. They had to some extent outlived the nomadic, and had attained to a pastoral or perhaps to an agricultural state of existence. Dr Anderson finds in their sepulchral remains a type of construction which is "completely structural," and characterised by a passage of access. He sums up his examination thus: "Their contents disclose to a certain extent the life and culture of the people. They possessed the same domestic animals as we still possess, and kept dogs and hunted the reindeer. Their common weapons were bows with flint-pointed arrows, and battle-axes of polished stone. They made pottery of a dark-coloured, thin, and hard-baked paste. The vessels, though not thrown on the wheel, were finely shaped, wide-mouthed, round-bottomed, and thick-lipped, often bevelled

outwardly and recurving over the vertical rim, which was usually highly ornamented. Their system of ornament was simple, consisting of shallow flutings or scorings in straight lines arranged in groups, contrasting as to their direction or markings with the fingernail."1 Britain at this time was separated from the Continent, and if we believe that these neolithic builders came thence by boats we get a picture of early man as already possessed of considerable skill in construction, and feeling his way onwards to better things.

In the charming picture of this simple life as given by Professor Boyd Dawkins, a clear conception is obtainable of how men lived in the hills and forests around this ancient parish, as in other parts of the land :

If we could in imagination take a stand on the summit of a hill commanding an extensive view of almost any part of Great Britain or Ireland in the neolithic period, we should look upon a landscape somewhat of this kind. These lines of smoke rising from among the trees of the dense virgin forest at our feet would mark the position of a neolithic homestead and of the neighbouring stockaded camp which afforded refuge in time of need; while here and there a gleam of corn would show the small patch of ripening wheat. We enter a track in the forest and thread our way to one of the clusters of homesteads, passing herds of goats and flocks of horned sheep, or disturbing a troop of horses or small short-horned oxen, or stumbling upon a swineherd tending the hogs in their search after roots. We should probably have to defend ourselves against the attack of some of the large dogs, used as guardians of the flock against bears, wolves, and foxes, and for hunting the wild animals. At last, on emerging into the clearing, we should see a little plot of flax or small-eared wheat, and near the homestead the inhabitants clad some in linen and others in skins, and ornamented with necklaces and pendants of stone, bone, or pottery, carrying on their daily occupations. Some are cutting wood with stone axes with a wonderfully sharp edge, fixed in wooden handles, with stone adzes and gouges, or with little saws composed of carefully notched pieces of flint about 3 or 4 inches long. . . . Some are at work preparing handles for the spears, shafts for the arrows, and wood for the bows or for the broad paddles used for propelling the canoes. Others are busy grinding and

1 Scotland in Pagan Times: Bronze and Stone Ages, p. 304.

sharpening the various stone tools, scraping skins with instruments ground to a circular edge, or carving various implements out of bone and antler with sharp splinters of flint, while the women are preparing the meal with pestles and mortars and grain-rubbers, and cooking it on the fire, generally outside the house, or spinning thread with spindle and distaff, or weaving it with a rude loom. We might also have seen them at work at the moulding of rude cups and vessels out of clay which had been carefully prepared."1

To think of this primitive life with its simple aims and absence of luxury-to recall that probably its most interesting features are lost to us, because there was no Hesiod or Homer to preserve them in song; to see their reverence for their departed ancestors as expressed in the simple cairns they erected-is to be brought sympathetically into contact with an early people of whom we would willingly know more.

This early race existed here long before Celtic or even Roman influence touched them. Their legends are most likely preserved in our folk-lore; their language absorbed, but yet not lost, in our modern speech; their customs are not eliminated, but exist as unconscious survivals in much that is modern; many of the superstitions of earlier centuries not yet wholly obliterated, still surviving in village life, through the indestructibility and potent force of tradition,-are all due to the fact that this pre-Celtic people were once on the soil, and did not pass away without leaving their influence behind them.2

They were of Iberian or Basque race, of small stature, of dark complexion, with black hair and eyes, with dolichocephalic skull.3

We now pass to the Bronze and Iron Ages, which unquestionably point to the invasions of new tribes, the contact of the insular with a larger culture, and the assimilation of the latter by the

1 Early Man in Early Britain, pp. 271-273.

* See 'The Village Community,' by G. L. Gomme, pp. 290-295.

3 "The Iberic peoples lived in Britain, secure from invasion, during the whole of the Neolithic Age, while Gaul and Spain were being conquered by the ancestors of the Celts of history."-Early Man in Early Britain, p. 342.

former, or, in some places, the substitution of the latter for the former. The two periods are probably to be accounted for by the different incursions of Celtic tribes, whose direction seems mostly to have been westward; they crossed from the Continent. to Britain in search of wealth, and followed out the wandering, communicative instincts of their nature. Says Mr Kidd: "The law of life has been always the same from the beginning; ceaseless and inevitable struggle and competition; ceaseless and inevitable selection and rejection; ceaseless and inevitable progress." "The first prominent feature which we have everywhere to notice in groups and associations of primitive men is their military character. In whatever portion of the world savage man has been met with, he is engaged in continuous warfare. The great business in the life of the society to which he belongs is always war with other societies of the same kind." When we recall, too, that even in an advanced culture like that of to-day, progress is ever accompanied with the sound of conflict, we have less cause to be astonished that warfare should characterise much earlier times. At any rate, the quiet isolated people of Iberian blood were invaded by the incursions of Celtic population, and were either driven northward into the fastness of the mountains, enslaved, or exterminated. This invasion led to the introduction of the second and third periods (although many centuries were between them), when bronze and iron were the metals respectively in use. The general opinion about the Celts is that they came from Gaul, and were kin to several of the European races that have played an important part in history. They were possessed with the nerve, energy, and enthusiasm that made them conquerors wherever they went. "The one section is known as the Goidelic, the other as the Brythonic; and while the first now

1 Social Evolution, pp. 39, 45.

2 "The Celts brought the knowledge of bronze into Britain.”—Early Man in Early Britain, p. 349.