CLOTHING AND ORNAMENTS.

207

clay or bone, and sewn, at least in the reindeer age, by needles, whose workmanship is truly marvellous when we remember that they were manufactured solely with flint knives and drills. Tendons split into filaments more or less fine, or thread made from the fibres of flax or from the bark of trees, were employed in sewing. Fragments of coarse tissues found at Wangen and Robenhausen probably formed part of some garment.

Among the articles found in the above-mentioned places was a piece of leather perfectly preserved, which proves that the primitive inhabitants of Eastern Switzerland were acquainted with the first principles of tanning. But their mode of preparing the skins, and the ingredients they used in tanning, are unknown to us, nor are we likely at present to be better informed on the subject.

We are bound to say, in praise of the good sense of our ancestresses of the caves and lake dwellings, that nowhere has any trace been found of the stays adopted by the civilised woman of modern times, which interfere with and prevent the free play of the most important organs in the body; and of which the young Roman girls already endeavoured to justify the use by the end they desired to attain, that is, the slender grace of reeds.

IV. ORNAMENTS AND JEWELS.

6

Théophile Gautier says somewhere: The ideal torments even the rudest natures. The savage who tattoos his body, or plasters it with red or blue paint, who passes a fishbone through his nostrils, is acting in obedience to a confused sense of beauty. He seeks something beyond what actually is; guided by an obscure notion of art, he endeavours to perfect his type. The taste for ornament distinguishes man from the brute more clearly than any other peculiarity; no deg ever thought of putting rings into his ears, while the stupid Papuans, who eat clay and earthworms, manufacture these ornaments from shells and coloured berries.' From the stone age onwards, and more especially from the age of polished stone, the list of ornaments is almost complete, so natural to man is the

taste for adornment, still more so perhaps to woman, to whom coquetry often lends a further charm. But to be just, it must be owned that many men are women in this respect, as our modern dandies sufficiently show; also the ornaments of feathers, coral, shells, glass, stone, wood, and bone worn by savage tribes, and even by self-styled civilised nations.

In the caves, the dolmens, and the tumuli, and in the lake dwellings of the ante-metallic period, we find neck

FIGS. 74, 75. JET BEADS FOUND IN TWO YORKSHIRE BARROWS.
(After Evans.)

laces made from the teeth of the dog, the wolf, the chamois, the reindeer, and even of the ox and the horse. Others made of discs of the shell of the queen (Cardium edule),' of various kinds of sea shells (natica, cypræa, littorina, &c.), some of which belong to species still living at the time when they were perforated for the passage of the cord on which they were strung. Others, such as those found

It is a fact worthy of note that the practice of making necklaces of discs of the cardium was continued without interruption from the palæolithic age down to the age of bronze, and perhaps even later. In our day the savage tribes of New Caledonia make themselves bracelets with perforated discs, arranged in several rows, taken from the thick shell of various salt-water molluscs.

in Périgord, had long been more or less fossilised, but were still very solid, and had been carried from the shell deposits of Touraine to the districts where they now lie (Cypræa pyrum, pectunculus; glycimeris, arca). But the finest necklaces are made of jet alone, or of jet and ivory (figs. 74 and 75).

1

Lastly, the Coscinospora globularis, cut into discs in every respect similar to those found in the ruins of Khorsabad in Nineveh, entered also into the manufacture of necklaces. The terebratulæ and the ammonites of the secondary beds have been also used as ornaments. Amber, jet, callaïs, flint, slate, marble, hardened clay, bone, wood, &c., were adopted to make pendants both be fore and after the discovery of bronze. Bracelets, rings, bangles, and buttons, of varied and graceful forms and different materials, pins and hair pins almost exactly similar to those now used, pendants of elegant shapes, and lastly, combs made of yew-wood, complete the list of ornaments. It is extremely probable, if not certain, that flint arrow heads of very delicate workmanship, which MM. Cazalis and Cartailhac dug out of the dolmens of the departments of Gard and Aveyron, were only used as amulets or ornaments.

As to the shells of living or fossil species, they were employed not only in the manufacture of necklaces, bracelets, and rings, but also to adorn bands for the head, or even the clothes themselves, as we saw was the case among the cave-dwellers of Mentone and Laugerie Basse.

If space allowed us to speak of the various ornaments in use in Europe during the ages of bronze and iron, we should find that they offer the most varied forms, the most graceful types, and possess the most perfect finish and delicacy. At the last Prehistoric Congress held at Bologna we were filled with surprise and admiration by the rich collection of the Chevalier Aria. Modern art

A kind of light green turquoise found occasionally in the dolmens of Morbihan, and even in th se of Provence.

2 Modern art has been inspired from some of these models, as a glance at the windows of the jewellers of to-day will sufficiently show

would doubtless find in it more than one model worthy of imitation as also among the ornaments excavated from the lakes of Switzerland, Italy, Savoy, and even from those of Gamboge.1

In a recently published paper, L'âge de la pierre polie et du bronze au Cambodge, Dr. Noulet has represented among the stone ornaments, large rings with wide flat edges which were used as bracelets. Th se rings both in shape and measurements, resemble those described by Dr. Marchant which were found in sinking a well near Dijon. same remark applies to several smaller rings used as bracelets or earrings by the primitive inhabitants of Gamboge. Still smaller rings were often used with sea shells to make ornaments for the ears, belts, and necklaces.

The

CHAPTER II.

INDUSTRY.

I. METHODS EMPLOYED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF STONE IMPLEMENTS.

THE instincts common to all humanity necessarily produce a similarity of results when men are subjected to the same needs and placed in the same circumstances. We must therefore have recourse to the methods actually employed by modern savages in the production of their tools, in order to form a correct idea of the manner in which primitive man was accustomed to carve flints or other stones.1 We give the account of the process employed by the Red Indians of California in the manufacture of their stone arrow heads as observed by an eye-witness, M. Cabot, and quoted by Sir Charles Lyell.

Seated on the ground and holding a stone anvil on his knees, the workman begins by breaking in two a pebble. obsidian by a blow with his agate chisel. Then with a second blow he detaches from one of the halves a fragment about an inch in thickness. Holding this splinter on the anvil between the thumb and first finger of the left hand, he strikes a series of blows, each of which breaks off smaller and smaller fragments until the weapon is reduced to the

'Although flint in its natural condition is extremely hard, it sometimes, if it lies long enough in a permeable soil, undergoes so great a change as to permit of its being cut with a steel knife. This change in the hardness of certain flints is due, according to M. Müller, of Poictiers, to their chemical composition. They contain two kinds of silica, one white and insoluble by water, the other transparent like horn, and easily dissolved. This latter naturally disappears in consequence of the innltration of water, and the white silica persists in a much divided state, and the molecules which enter into its composition are separated with ease.-Evans.