270 TlMEHRI. 
their identity in all but material with the wooden benches 
/ which still form almost the most prominent feature in the 
furniture of the houses of the Indians of Guiana. Similar 
benches were used, as is evident from the occurrence of 
specimens, either entire or in a more or less broken con- 
dition, by the Indians of the West Indian Islands.* These 
wooden benches are almost always — indeed, as far as I 
know, invariably — either rough representations of animals, 
or the two ends (the bow and the stern, as we may 
call them) are carved, as in Mr. Atkinson's stone 
here figured, to represent the heads, or the head 
and tail, of animals. I have myself little doubt that 
the ' stone tables' such as those in the Blackmore 
Museum, the wooden benches formerly and still used by 
Indians, and Mr. ATKINSON'S stone-implement, are all 
examples, varying according to circumstances, of benches. 
The fact that the last mentioned example ends in a 
point, instead of being provided with legs, so that it can 
not be made to stand upright on a hard surface, may 
perhaps be explained by the circumstance that Indian 
houses are often built on loose sand in which the 
pointed base of the bench might be inserted. 
It may be as well to add that in answer to a suggestion 
which I made to Dr. BLACKMORE that the so-called 'stone- 
tables, used in bruising grain' are really benches or 
stools, he wrote as follows : ' what you say respecting 
the so-called stone-tables is very interesting; if they are 
merely stools, what are their real corn-rubbers or mills 
like ? or how do they bruise and prepare the corn ? 
* There is very good example in the Christy collection, in form oC 
