Journal of Proceedings. xxxv
was particularly struck with the stone spear-head so fashioned as to
give the weapon a rotatory motion in the air, and thus increase the
accuracy of flight. This specimen was especially interesting to him
because it came from America. When he. was travelling there he
noticed that the arrows of the aborigines of the Amazon valley were
fringed with feathers arranged spirally round the shafts so as to keep
the weapon in a straight path when projected. In many other parts,
as for instance in New Guinea, weapons are not so "rifled," and it was,
therefore, a very noteworthy fact that the custom of rifling spears and
arrows had persisted in America from the earliest stone ages until now.
In Mr. Wallace's opinion the carved figures of men and animals
which Sir Antonio Brady had exhibited were also of the very greatest
interest; they were of such intense interest that it was difficult to
believe they were genuine. If he remembered rightly, the animal
carvings of Reindeer, Mammoth, &c, which had hitherto been dis-
covered were all of a period supposed to be intermediate between the
Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages—the "Reindeer Period" of M. Lartet;
but it was evident, Sir Antonio's carvings being accepted as genuine,
that such were not by any means the oldest. They had represented
by them not only the animals then existing, but also the men who fed
upon them ; of the hunter as well as the hunted. It must be remem-
bered that savages always depicted in their carvings and drawings
their own type, and therefore we. may take the figures carved upon the
bones to represent the type of face which prevailed among the hunters
of the Mammoth. One of the carvings presented a curious resemblance
to the profile of the Duke of Wellington, and accepting that as a contem-
poraneous carving, they might draw therefrom the conclusion that the
early hunters of the Mammoth were by no means a low and degraded race.
This was an exceedingly interesting point in connection with the ques-
tion of the antiquity of man. We have not made the slightest approach
towards the discovery of a lower type. Although we have been enabled
to trace the Old World hunter back to the Pleistocene age, he remains
as much man as the most intelligent races of the present day. Of course
he did not mean therefore to infer that men of a lower type had not
existed, but he believed that they must go immensely further back to
discover the first traces of primeval man. He did not agree with
Professor Boyd Dawkins in the inference that man did not exist in the
Miocene age because the animals which must have surrounded him,
being of forms which had developed into other species, man would
have therefore been influenced by the law of development, and in the
succeeding ages would have presented characters very different from
the genus Homo as at present existing. Mr. Wallace was disposed to
think that, man having reached a certain stage of development, his
physical and mental qualities would enable him rather to control than
be controlled by the changing character of his environment; and there-