ANTHROPOLOGY, 
127 
stone implements of an even lower class have not only been found in 
the ground, but there is evidence that they had remained in use into 
modern times. In Tasmania it is on record from European eye-witnesses 
that tools made from chips of hard stone by trimming to an edge on one 
side, and which were grasped in the hand without any handle, were the 
cutting and hacking instruments of the natives into the present century, 
almost up to the time of their extinction. Thus apparently the oldest 
known phase of human life endured in this region untouched by civilisa¬ 
tion, and travellers have the opportunity of studying its recent relics 
in Tasmania, while similar traces of rude Stone Age life, though not 
reaching up to so late a time, are making their appearance both in West 
Australia and New Zealand. 
Travellers of the present day have still opportunities of observation 
in the history of culture which will have disappeared in another genera¬ 
tion. Inquiry in outlying countries should be made for the vanishing 
survivals of arts and customs, stories, and even languages. In Europe 
there is much of this kind to be met with by the inquirer, especially off 
the beaten track. Thus the dug-out canoe, the monoxyle of Hippokrates, 
need not be sought on African lakes, for it is still the fisherman’s craft 
of Hungary and Bosnia; and in the same region the apparatus for pro¬ 
ducing the ceremonial need-fire by friction of wood, which disappeared 
from Scotland towards the beginning of this century, and the " whithorn ” 
of coiled bark, the rustic musical instrument just vanishing from English 
peasant life, are still in ceremonial use. As for savage tribes which come 
within the traveller’s ken, though their stone implements have been 
mostly superseded by the white man’s cutlery, many arts of the remote 
past may still be seen. The yet simpler means of producing fire by 
drilling a stick with the hands without further mechanical adaptation 
may still be seen among savages who have not lost their old arts, and 
the twisting of thread with the hands which preceded the use of even 
the spindle is not everywhere forgotten. Though the study of the religion 
and folklore of the savage and barbaric world must be left to those who 
are residents rather than visitors, the passer-by who inquires may see 
primitive rites of religion or magic. Thus in many an Indian house 
in Arizona or New Mexico the traveller is reminded of his classic 
recollections when he sees the first morsel of the meal thrown into the 
fire as an offering to the ancestral spirits. 
