86 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 
official travels get well away from the beaten track ; but to 
those who travel at all opportunities to add something to our 
knowledge of early man must now and then occur. It is to 
such among you that these outlines are more particularly 
addressed. They will serve a useful purpose if they keep to 
stimulate an interest in the prehistoric antiquities of the 
Island, and thereby tend to foster future research. If they 
are no more than outlines, it is for reasons already told. 
TI.—VEDDAS AND THE STONE AGE. 
The researches of Messrs. J. Pole, E. E. Green, Drs. F. 
and P. Sarasin, Dr. C. G. and B. Z. Seligmann, and Mr. C. 
Hartley have shown that in bygone days Ceylon was inhabited 
by a primitive people, whose weapons and tools were of stone, 
bone, and wood. 
The want of representative types of artefacts has, till quite 
lately, rendered the culture stage (or stages) attained by these 
early folk a matter of some speculation ;* while, in the absence 
of definite geological evidence, nothing certain could be said 
of the age of such tools as were discovered. The vast majority 
of implements recorded by the above-mentioned authorities 
were found in the hill country, often on the surface, and 
seldom more than a foot below it. Their association with 
charcoal and presumably modern refuse and their occurrence 
in Vedda caves have led to the belief that the Veddas them- 
selves or their immediate ancestors were the stone-age people 
of Ceylon. 

* Drs, F. and P. Sarasin (‘‘ Spolia Zeylanica,”’ Vol. IV., Part XVI., 
1907, p. 189) say: ‘“‘ These stone chips are of a very rough kind, 
belonging to the older or Paleolithie Stone Age.” And on p. 190: 
‘We, furthermore, may venture to say that the second main period 
of the Stone Age, the Neolithic one,, . . ,is entirely wanting in the 
Island of Ceylon.” Dr. C. G. and B. Z. Seligmann say (“ Spolia 
Zeylanica,”’ Vol. V., Part XX., 1908, pp. 162 and 163): “‘ As regards 
the type of these quartz implements, there seems no good reason to 
consider them other than neolithic; . . . . many of the specimens 
differ in no respect from implements of the neolithic age found in 
Europe.’’ James Parsons (loc. cit., p. 190) remarks of one tool which 
was submitted to him that it closely resembles an eolith. 
