Edward Burnett Tylor

“ By the time of his return home, however, the unconscious training in precise methods which he had acquired in the course of his professional work was already leading him into the scientific career which henceforth took the largest share of his life. In examining the firearms of various pattern which came under his notice to be reported on, he became aware that their successive changes did not result from far-reaching steps of inventive imagination, but from long courses of minute and even accidental alterations, taken advantage of to render the new model an improvement on its predecessors. ”

“ Among other contributions to the study of palæolithic stone implements, so important in Europe from their belonging to the remotely ancient period of the extinct mammoth and rhinoceros, he confirmed the discovery of Lord Avebury that similar implements characterised the earliest stages of culture in Egypt. ”