258 TlMEHRI. 
during the last quarter of a century. Twenty years ago 
very little attention had been paid to these implements ; 
and very little was known about them. Now, many have 
been carefully collected and compared ; and the result 
has been that much light has been thrown on the for- 
gotten, because non-historic, age during which they were 
used. Again, more recently, much has been done in the 
way of collecting comparatively modern stone-imple- 
ments, especially of the American continent ; and, not 
without considerable result, many attempts have been 
made to read from these their history. As an example 
of splendid work done in this gathering of materials for 
the history of the pre-historic periods of America may be 
mentioned the Smithsonian collection at Philadelphia and 
in England, the Blackmore Museum (which also consists 
essentially of American examples) at Salisbury. The 
great value of these and similar collections lies in the 
fact that in them are brought together such large num- 
bers of disused stone-implements that, these being com- 
pared, the one with the other, and all with examples of 
the modern stone-implements still used by many savages, 
their original use is gradually discerned, and they are 
thus made to tell something of the history of the habits of 
the forgotten people by whom they were made and used. 
They form, in short, one, often the only, means by which 
the history of times and of people of whom no written, and 
perhaps at best only fragmentary traditional, record 
exists may be re-constructed. 
As an illustration specially referring to the case of the 
West Indies, I may refer to the hints which I have al- 
ready given in a paper read before the English An- 
