The Stone Period. 23 
party to tea at the Island, and a goodly number of ladies and gentle- 
men responded to the invitation. In the course of the evening, 
Mr. E. T. Srevens read the following able paper on 
Tur Stone PERiop. 
In anticipation of the visit of this Society to the Blackmore 
Museum to-morrow, I have been asked to speak to you of the Stone 
Implements and other objects-of which the collection consists. You 
are probably aware that this collection is chiefly remarkable for the 
admirable manner in which it enables us to study the simple arts 
which prevailed, in various countries and at different times, in what 
_is known as the Stone Period. Much misunderstanding appears to 
prevail as to what is meant by the “Stone Period,” and it may be 
well to deal with this question at the very outset. Some tribes of 
men are, at the present day, living in their Stone Period, others 
have but recently emerged from it, whilst we learn from the dis- 
covery of certain chipped flints and rubbed stone hatchets, that 
tribes, of whom history tells us absolutely nothing, existed in their 
Stone Period in regions where a far higher state of culture is his- 
torically known to have prevailed for centuries. The Stone Period, 
therefore, affords us no measure of time, not at least of time positive, 
it exists to-day, existed yesterday, or thousands of years since; the 
Stone Period however, is of great value, as a test of human culture. 
It represents to us a culture-stage in which man was, and is, fain to 
supply his needs by means of implements and weapons formed from 
natural substanees—such as wood, stone, shell, bone, horn, and the 
teeth and claws of animals. During this period some tribes made 
use of the native copper or meteoric iron which they collected, but 
these masses were merely hammered into shape, they were treated 
only as malleable varieties of stone and were not melted and cast 
into the required forms. 
There is evidence of the existence, in some countries, of a Copper 
Period, during which native copper was melted and cast into tools 
and weapons. But a great advance was made upon the use of un- 
alloyed copper, when it was discovered that an admixture of tin 
imparted a hardness to this comparatively soft and ductile metal. 
