It may be thought that, in the existing state of man, few marks remain from which his early history may be deduced; but those unacquainted with the progress of inductive research, would be astonished at the magnitude and importance of results derivable from an apparently simple and worthless object. An unthinking wanderer, stumbling upon an ancient tombstone, if reproached with inattention, would ask what is to be learned from such a relic. A word of inscription would give a clue to the language, and, coupled with other observations, to the date of the monument; the character of the stone, whether roughly hewn or elaborately carved, would give evidence as to the tools used in its formation, and consequently furnish a key to the manufacturing and metallurgic knowledge of the fabricators. The stone itself might possibly not be similar to those in the immediate vicinity, and thence would indicate that travelling and the power of transfer were practised, and the skeleton within would indicate the physical formation of the men of that day. We have selected here a case of an ordinary grave, but how much stronger would the case be were we to take a sarcophagus of Egypt, enclosing a mummy? The inscription, the fabric of the cere-cloth, the chemical substances with which it is impregnated, as well as those by which the body is preserved, and the relics commonly deposited with it, would lead, by careful investigation, to a tolerably accurate knowledge of the character and habits of the time; and where many relics of different descriptions, collected from different parts, are skilfully compared, a body of evidence is arrived at, minutely circumstantial in its details, and the veracity of which admits of no dispute. As the researches of comparative anatomists have enabled us, from the examination of a single bone, to pronounce with certainty upon the general conformation and habits of the animal to which it belonged; and as, in many cases, from the existence of such animals, we may go on, step by step, to the nature of the earth's surface at the period when they lived: so the meanest relic of art will serve the natural historian of man as a fulcrum by which he may turn up a mass of genuine information; with which, as with all knowledge, as its store increases, the power of applying it becomes more facile; until at length it scarcely becomes an exaggeration to say, that every material relic bears in itself its own natural history, and, if artificially modified, the history of its fabricators--what the germ is to futurity the relic is to the past.