The Stone Period. 



23 



party to tea at the Island, and a goodly number of ladies and gentle- 

 men responded to the invitation. In the course of the evening, 

 Mr. E. T. Stevens read the following able paper on 



The Stone Period. 



In anticipation of the visit of this Society to the Blackmore 

 Museum to-morrow, I have been asked to speak to you of the Stone 

 Implements and other objects of which the collection consists. You 

 are probably aware that this collection is chiefly remarkable for the 

 admirable manner in which it enables us to study the simple arts 

 which prevailed, in various countries and at different times, in what 

 is known as the Stone Period. Much misunderstanding appears to 

 prevail as to what is meant by the " Stone Period/' and it may be 

 well to deal with this question at the very outset. Some tribes of 

 men are, at the present day, living in their Stone Period, others 

 have but recently emerged from it, whilst we learn from the dis- 

 covery of certain chipped flints and rubbed stone hatchets, that 

 tribes, of whom history tells us absolutely nothing, existed in their 

 Stone Period in regions where a far higher state of culture is his- 

 torically known to have prevailed for centuries. The Stone Period, 

 therefore, affords us no measure of time, not at least of time positive, 

 it exists to-day, existed yesterday, or thousands of years since ; the 

 Stone Period however, is of great value, as a test of human culture. 

 It represents to us a culture-stage in which man was, and is, fain to 

 supply his needs by means of implements and weapons formed from 

 natural substances — such as wood, stone, shell, bone, horn, and the 

 teeth and claws of animals. During this period some tribes made 

 use of the native copper or meteoric iron which they collected, but 

 these masses were merely hammered into shape, they were treated 

 only as malleable varieties of stone and were not melted and cast 

 into the required forms. 



There is evidence of the existence, in some countries, of a Copper 

 Period, during which native copper was melted and cast into tools 

 and weapons. But a great advance was made upon the use of un- 

 alloyed copper, when it was discovered that an admixture of tin 

 imparted a hardness to this comparatively soft and ductile metal. 



