LOST ARTS OF PEIMITIVE EACES. 167 



particular animals requiring special kinds of tackle or 

 weapons. Many tribes on the sea-coasts had their 

 summer stations near to oyster-beds, on the produce 

 of which, along with sea-birds and fish, they sub- 

 sisted during a part of the year, though we know that 

 in winter the same tribes dwelt inland, and hunted 

 deer and other large animals. After the extinction 

 of the tribe these different stations would present the 

 most diverse appearances. One would yield a great 

 collection of mis-shapen and half-made implements, 

 difficult to understand, and rude and primitive in 

 aspect. Another would apparently be the shelter or 

 station of a tribe provided only with implements for 

 hunting, and leaving behind it abundance of the bones 

 of deer and other large game. Another would show a 

 people living solely on fish, and with implements of 

 entirely different form, and mostly of bone. Another 

 would present gouges for tapping maple-trees, and 

 kettles of pottery broken in the boiling of sugar. 

 Another on the coast might show little beyond heaps 

 of oyster-shells, and a few of the stones used in 

 opening them for use. The main town would have 

 the aspect, in its kitchen-middens and stores of 

 pottery, of the settlement of a far more advanced 

 people. I do not say that all of our modern archae- 

 ologists have failed to appreciate the meaning of these 

 differences, but it is impossible to overlook the fact 

 that many of their researches have been vitiated to 

 some extent by neglect of considerations so simple, 

 that the most ordinary observers of the pre-historic 



