54 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 
ON THE OCCURRENCE OF PIGMY IMPLEMENTS 
IN CEYLON. 
By C. Harttey, M.A., 
Principal of the Royal College, Colombo. 
P a Paper read before the Ceylon Natural History Society 
in May, 1913, I gave a brief account of the stone imple- 
ments of Ceylon, in which I reserved consideration of the 
so-called pigmy implements for a later occasion. The study 
of the Stone Age in this country is itself of recent date, and 
the identification of pigmies was not completed until the year 
1912. Before that date however the Doctors Sarasin in 
their excellent work “‘ Die Steinzeit auf Ceylon,” published 
in 1908, had illustrated several stones for which they suggested 
tentatively a pigmy or (as named on the Continent) a Tardé- 
noisian origin ; and the late Mr. John Pole had in his collection 
some sixty specimens, now in the Colombo Museum, which 
he was unfortunately unable to identify. 
My own acquaintance with pigmy implements was until 
recently almost non-existent ; but having found a few stones 
in Ceylon which strongly reminded me of what I had seen in 
England, I sent a few in 1912 to the Rev. R. A. Gatty, who 
has collected very large numbers of them in Lincolnshire, and 
who, until his lamented death in March of this year, was one 
of the authorities on the subject. He replied that my 
specimens were undoubtedly pigmies, and prophesied that 
they would shortly be discovered in considerable quantities, 
a prediction which was abundantly verified the next year. 
To begin with a short survey of the pigmy question in 
other lands, I may say that there is no division of the stone-age 
manufacture which presents so many problems still unsolved. 
It is only in comparatively recent years that attention has 
been directed to these minute and puzzling objects, which 
had previously escaped notice by reason of their insignificant 
