still use stone weapons, varying in form and in the handles used,
and that the weapons of the Australians living near Darling River,
as well as those of the Tasmanians, are without handles.

During the first centuries of the Christian era, strange rites were
still performed in honor of dolmens and menhirs. The councils of the
Church condemned them, and the emperors and kings supported by their
authority the decrees of the ecclesiastics.[24] Childebert in 554,
Carloman in 742, Charlemagne by an edict issued at Aix-la-Chapelle
in 789,[25] forbid their subjects to practise these rites borrowed
from heathenism. But popes and emperors are alike powerless in
this direction, and one generation transmits its traditions and
superstitions to another. In the seventeenth century a Protestant
missionary called in the aid of the secular arm to destroy a
superstition deeply rooted in the minds of his people; in England,
sorcerers were proceeded against for having used flint arrow-heads
in their pretended witchcraft; in Sweden, a polished hatchet
yeas placed in the bed of women in the pangs of labor; in Burmah,
thunder-stones reduced to powder were looked upon as an infallible
cure for ophthalmia; and the Canaches have a collection of stones with
a special superstition connected with each. But why seek examples
so far away and in a past so remote? In our own day anti in our own
land we find men who think themselves invulnerable and their cattle
safe if they are fortunate enough to possess a polished flint.

Prehistoric times are generally divided into three epochs -- the STONE
AGE, the BRONZE AGE, and the IRON AGE. We owe this classification to
the archaeologists of Northern Europe.[26] It is neither very exact
nor very satisfactory, and fresh discoveries daily tend to unsettle
it.[27] Alsberg maintained that iron was the first metal used,