We are not without abundant evidence that the primitive Caledonian waged successful war with the wild natives of the forest. By arrow, sling, and lance, and also, no doubt, with help of gins and traps, the largest and fiercest of them fell a prey to the wild hunter. The horns especially of the deer supplied him with weapons, implements, ornaments, and sepulchral memorials. His wants were few, his tastes simple and barbarous, his religion probably as unspiritual as the most base of savage creeds. In the long wanderings of his nomade fathers across the continents of Asia and Europe, they had greatly deteriorated from the primal dignity of the race, they had forgotten all the heaven-taught knowledge of Eden, and had utterly lost the antediluvian metallurgic arts. It may perhaps be asked if the annals of so mean a race are worthy of the labour required in dragging them to light from their long-forgotten repositories? The answer is, they are our ancestry, even though we may question our lineal descent; our precursors, if not our progenitors. From them we derive our inheritance and birthright; nor, amid all the later mingling of races, can we assume that no drop of their blood mingles in our veins. There can be no question that this aboriginal race continued to occupy their island home, with slow and very slight progression, for many centuries. The disclosures of the latest alluvial deposits have furnished evidence of the appearance which the face of the country presented within the historic era, and leave no room to doubt that vast forests covered so large a portion of the soil as to afford no great area for the occupation of its aboriginal colonists. Taking into account with this the abundance of those rude weapons and implements from whence we give that era the name of the Stone Period, and the general uniformity of the circumstances under which they are discovered, we are furnished with satisfactory evidence of a thinly peopled country, occupied by the same tribes with nearly unchanging habits for many ages. The elements, however, of a great revolution were at length introduced among this simple race, and, as usual in the history of progressive civilisation, they appear to have come from without. The change by which we detect the close of the long era of barbarism, and the introduction of a new and more advanced period, is the discovery of the art of smelting ores, and the consequent substitution of metallic weapons and implements for those of stone. The former presents us with the helplessness of childhood without its promise; the latter is the healthful infancy of a vigorous and magnificent manhood.