forests of Northern Europe, no one can confidently say.  Collecting the various indications from the superstitions, language, and habits of this barbarian people, and comparing them with like peculiarities of the most ancient races now existing in Europe, we can frame a very plausible hypothesis that these early savages belonged to that great family of which the Finns and Laps, and possibly the Basques, are scattered members.  Their skulls, also, are analogous in form to those of the Finnish race.  This age the archaeologists have denominated the “Stone Age” of European antiquity.

Following this is what has been called by them the “Bronze Age.”  Another, more powerful, and more cultivated race or collection of peoples inundates Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, and other districts.  They make war against and destroy the early barbarians; they burn their water-huts, and force them to the mountains, or to the most northern portions of the continent.  This new race has a taste for objects of beauty.  They work copper and bronze; they make use of beautiful vases of earthenware and ornaments of the precious metals; but they have yet no knowledge of iron or steel.  Their dead are burned instead of being buried, as was done by the preceding races.  They are evidently more warlike and more advanced than the Finnish barbarians.  Of their race or family it is difficult to say anything trustworthy.  Their skulls belong to the “long-skulled” races, and would ally them to the Kelts.  Antiquaries have called their remains “Keltic remains.”

Still another age in this ancient history is the “Iron Age,” when the tribes of Europe used iron weapons and implements, and had advanced from the nomadic condition to that of cultivators of the ground, though still gaining most of their livelihood from fishing and hunting.  This period no doubt approached the period of historical annals, and the iron men may have been the earliest Teutons of the North,—­our own forefathers; but of their race or mixture of races we have no certain evidence, and can only make approximate hypotheses,—­the division of “ages” by archaeologists, it should be remembered, being not in any way a fixed division of races, but only indicating the probability of different races at those different early periods.  What was the date of these ages cannot at all be determined; the earlier are long before any recorded European annals, but there is no reason to believe that they approach in antiquity the Asiatic records and remains.

Such, until recently, were the historic and scientific evidences with regard to the antiquity of man.  His most venerable records, his most ancient dates of historic chronology were but of yesterday, when compared with the age of existing species of plants and animals, or with the opening of the present geologic era.  Every new scientific investigation seemed, from its negative evidence, to render more improbable the existence of the “fossil man.”