Notes on West Indian Stone-Implements, 
(Illustrated.) 
By the Editor. 
No. 1. 
T is almost certain that, at an earlier or later 
period, stone-implements were made and used by 
s men in all parts of the world. Sometimes, as was 
the case in civilized Europe, the practice was discontinued 
so long ago that the very fact that stone-implements were 
used had completely died out from memory, and has 
only recently been re-discovered ; sometimes, as in many 
parts of Australasia, stone-implements are still made and 
used indaily life. Sometimes, again, as inthe West Indies, to 
give an instance intermediate between the two extreme 
cases already quoted, the practice has died out as com- 
pletely as in Europe, but this has happened comparatively 
very recently. Stone-implements were probably still in 
common use in the West Indies and in Guiana, (which 
it maybe stated, once for all, will be treated in these notes 
as part of the West Indies), three centuries ago ; and 
many of the stones themselves still exist to this day, scat- 
tered here and there, in more or less abundance, to be 
recognised, when they are occasionally unearthed, as 
"thunder-bolts" by West Indian old women of both 
sexes. It is of these stone-implements that we propose 
to write. 
The study of European and, to a less extent, of extra- 
European stone-implements, has progressed marvellously 
