IV METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY 213 



that the minds of men being everywhere similar, 

 differing in quality and quantity but not in kind 

 of faculty, like circumstances must tend to produce 

 like contrivances ; at any rate, so long as the need 

 to be met and conquered is of a very simple kind. 

 That two nations use calabashes or shells for 

 drinking-vessels, or that they employ spears, or 

 clubs, or swords and axes of stone and metal as 

 weapons and implements, cannot be regarded as 

 evidence that these two nations had a common 

 origin, or even that intercommunication ever took 

 place between them ; seeing that the convenience 

 of using calabashes or shells for such purposes, 

 and the advantage of poking an enemy with a 

 sharp stick, or hitting him with a heavy one, 

 must be early forced by nature upon the mind of 

 even the stupidest savage. And when he had 

 found out the use of a stick, he would need no 

 prompting to discover the value of a chipped or 

 whetted stone, or of an angular piece of native 

 metal, for the same object. On the other hand, 

 it may be doubted, whether the chances are not 

 greatly against independent peoples arriving at 

 the manufacture of a boomerang, or of a bow ; 

 which last, if one comes to think of it, is a rather 

 complicated apparatus ; and the tracing of the 

 distribution of inventions as complex as these, 

 and of such strange customs as betel -chewing and 

 tobacco-smoking, may afford valuable ethnological 

 hints. j 



