EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 259 
pestles and axes may perchance be broken and 
grow scarce, but the arrow-head shall perhaps 
never cease to wing its way through the ages 
to eternity.When some Vandal chieftain 
has razed to earth the British Museum, and per¬ 
chance, the winged bulls of Nineveh shall have 
lost most, if not all, of their features, the arrow¬ 
heads which the museum contains, may find 
themselves at home again in familiar dust, and 
resume their shining in new springs upon the 
bared surface of the earth, to be picked up for 
the thousandth time by the shepherd or savage 
that may be wandering there, and once more 
suggest their story to him.They cannot 
be said to be lost or found. Surely their use 
was not so much to bear its fate to some bird 
or quadruped, or man, as it was to lie here near 
the surface of the earth for a perpetual reminder 
to the generations that come after.As 
for museums, I think it is better to let nature 
take care of our antiquities. These are our an¬ 
tiquities, and they are cleaner to think of than 
the rubbish of the Tower of London, and they 
are a more ancient armor than is. there. It is 
a recommendation that they are so inobvious 
that they occur only to the eye and thought 
that chances to be directed toward them. 
When you pick up an arrow-head and put it 
in your pocket, it may say, “Eh, you think you 
