By the Rev. J. O. Picton. 275 
will not give up the truth on the first demand, but must be patiently 
and unceasingly questioned, ere it will return a satisfying answer. 
Perhaps, in some respects, the training it ensures is severer than 
any which is to be attained elsewhere, since the evidence on which 
it rests is often fragmentary and detached, offering but little of 
what is congrous or systematic. Not that the objects with which 
it is conversant are not suggestive, but the recurrence in them of 
certain common types, testifying to their ends, is less frequent than 
in the natural sciences. A single bone may discover for the com- 
parative anatomist the entire skeleton to which it belonged; and 
thus he may mount up to a consideration of the habits of the 
animal itself. But the archeologist has rarely this advantage. 
The round tower and rude tumulus may be referred to others of 
the same class, but beyond this they are seldom explanatory, and 
the knowledge of their specific purpose must be gained from 
remoter sources, by the industrious collection of shreds and scraps 
of information, not obviously bearing on each other. It would be 
superfluous to remark how exacting in its requirements is such a 
mental process. Call to mind, too, how all-embracing in their 
range, how encyclopzedic, as it were, are these pursuits. The mature 
student of Archeology must of all men be the most accomplished, 
for what province of knowledge is there into which it is not requi- 
site for him to descend ? Whatever reflections he has garnered out 
of his professional life, whatever penetration he has acquired into 
the springs and motives of action, whatever powers of critical 
analysis or zesthetic skill, here there is need of all. He must have 
an intimate acquaintance with ancient literature, and physical 
science. He must be no stranger to the history of the fine, the 
useful, and the destructive arts, to the several facts which are 
yielded by political and jurisprudential inquiries, by geography, 
ethnology, and numismatics. Nor will this suffice. He must not 
overlook old traditions, philosophic systems, and the numerous 
forms in which, from time to time, the religious idea has been 
embodied, in short, nothing that tends to elucidate the constituent 
factions of nationality. Surely then, here there is scope for the 
employment of the most vigorous mind—every facility for unfolding, 
