16 FOSSIL MEN. 



ancient natives of the Mississippi Valley. I have 

 selected these as belonging to one of the most culti- 

 vated of the primitive populations of America, who 

 were agriculturists, weavers, and skilful potters and 

 workers in metal, yet used flint implements exactly 

 similar to those of the ruder tribes. Figure 3 shows 

 a group of polished stone implements from Nilsson, 

 all European and of the so-called later Stone Age. In 

 figure 4 are similar stone implements used in America 

 by the same peoples who used those in figure 1, and 

 at the same time. These, let it be observed, are not 

 obtained by arbitrary selection of a few similar things 

 out of many dissimilar. On the contrary, it would be 

 possible to fill pages with such illustrations, showing 

 that the handiwork of the red man, from Terra del 

 Fuego to Baffin's Bay, is of similar character to that 

 of pre-historic man in Europe. I cannot dwell here 

 on all that is implied in such resemblance. To those 

 who know the uses of such implements, every one of 

 them tells, not of a fancied instinct to make things of 

 one form as birds make their nests, but of a wide 

 range of similar wants and habits leading to similar 

 contrivances. Take, for instance, the hollow chisel or 

 gouge in figure 4, used by the American Indian to tap 

 the maple-tree, to extract its saccharine juice in 

 spring, and also to hollow out wooden troughs to hold 

 it ; and consider all that is implied in the fact that 

 precisely the same sort of chisel is found abundantly 

 in Scandinavia, as represented in figure 3. Or, take 

 the grooved axes in figures 3 and 4, and consider how 



