THE STONE AGE — PAST AND PRESENT. 213 



pens ttat old wordsj referring to stone and stone instruments, 

 are transferred to metal and metal instruments, and these 

 words take their place as relics of the Stone Age preserved in 

 language. Thus, in North America the Algonquin names for 

 copper and brass are mishwnuhik and ozawaubik, that is to say, 

 " red-stone" and " yellow-stone ;" while the name e-recJc, that 

 is, " stone," is used by some Indian tribes of California for all 

 metals indiscriminately. In the Delaware language, opeeJc is 

 " white," and assuun is " stone ;" so that it is evident that the 

 name of silver, opussuun, means "white- stone," while the ter- 

 mination "stone" is discernible in uisauaasun, "gold." In the 

 Mandan language, the words mahi, "knife," and mahitshuTce, 

 " flint," are clearly connected.^ Having thus examples of the 

 way in which the Stone Age has left its mai'k in language, in 

 races among whom it has been superseded within our know- 

 ledge, it is natural that we should expect to find words marking 

 the same change, in the speech of men who made the same 

 transition in times not clearly known to history. What has 

 been done in this way as yet comes to very little, but Jacob 

 Grimm has set an example by citing two words, hammer, Old 

 Norse hamarr, meaning both " hammer" and " rock,"' and Latin 

 saxum, a name possibly belonging to a time when instruments 

 to cut with, secure, were still of stone, and which still keeps 

 close to Old German sahs, Anglo-Saxon seax, a knife. ^ There 

 may possibly be some connexion between sagitta, arrow, and 

 saxum, stone, and in like manner between Sanskrit qlli, arrow, 

 Qila, stone, while in the Semitic family of languages, Hebrew 

 yn, clietz, arrow, V^H, clidtzdtz, gravel-stone, are both related 

 to the verb V^ll, chdtzatz, to cut. But against the inference 

 from these words, that their connexion belongs to a time when 

 stone was the usual material for sharp instruments, there lies 

 this strong objection, that knife and stone might get from the 

 same root names expressing sharpness, or any other quality 

 they have in common, without having anything directly to do 

 with one another, while the same word, hamar, may have been 

 found an equally suitable name for " hammer " and " rock,^' 



' Schoolcraft, part ii. pp. 389, 397, 463, 506 ; part iii. pp. 426, 448. 

 2 Grimm, D. M., p. 165 j G.D.S., p, 610, 



