ARCHEOLOGICAL REPORT.

BY DAVID BOYLE.

To the President and Members of the Canadian Institute :

GENTLEMEN,—Our year's work has been successful, and I am able to announce augmented interest in archæological matters, beyond the limits of the Institute. The increase of correspondence alone has been considerable and has occupied an unusually large portion of time. Many of the letters received are from farmers and young people; from the former, generally, with regard to features observed on the farm, and from the latter, asking for information about specimens they have found, and where they may procure books that will lend them assistance in prosecuting the study of archæology. In a large number of cases correspondents ask for copies of our reports, but these, I am sorry to say, we cannot always send, as the issue is too small to supply the increasing demand.

During no other period since the commencement of this work have so many requests and invitations been received to go here and there for the purpose of examining this or that locality. Only want of time and means has prevented this being done in many cases. It is hoped, however, that much of such work may be overtaken during the next year, especially in some of the newer parts of the country, where the conditions for investigation are superior to those of the old settlements.

With the increase of interest manifested in this study, two types of individual are particularly noticeable. First, there is the man of true scientific instinct, who says, in effect, "I am glad this work is going on, and it is my intention to help it in every way I can," and, secondly, there is the sordid, mercenary man ̧ who says in effect also, "I am glad this work is going on, and it is my intention to help it in every way I can, so long as I can make anything out of it." have to thank both for much valuable assistance rendered during the year.

We

Again also, we are indebted to the Legislature of the province for the aid extended to our work. Without it, absolutely nothing could have been done, except in a very perfunctory sort of way.

Up to the present time, one of the chief drawbacks to the museum has been its undesirable situation on a third storey. It is hoped that the new arrangements entered into will render it more attractive to the general public. Hereafter, with the approval of the Minister of Education, the Museum will find accommodation in the building of the Toronto Public Library, where it will be open

daily, (all day, and not only during afternoons as formerly). This arrangement' however, affects only the exhibition of the specimens. As heretofore, the archæological work will be under the direction of the Canadian Institute, and will be as purely provincial in its character as it has always been.

During the year we have been under especial obligations to Hon. Peter McLaren and Mrs. McLaren, of Perth; Dr. T. A. Beeman, of Bancroft; Dr. T. W. Beeman, of Perth; Dr. M. I. Beeman, of Centreville; Mr. Arthur Brown, Public School Inspector, Morrisburg; Mr. Archibald Riddell, Bancroft; Mr. Fred. Mullett, Bancroft; Mr. John Bell, ex-M. P. Lennox and Addington; Mr. Chester Henderson, Southwold; Mr. D. H. Price, Aylmer; Mr. J. H. Coyne, St. Thomas; Mr. J. H. Crouse, Brantford; Messrs. McCrossen, Osborne and Bend, of Penetanguishene; Mr. W. H. Jones, Vancouver City, British Columbia; Mr. T. Sydney Dobbin, Esquimalt, British Columbia; Mr. Alan Macdougall, Toronto; Capt. David Allan, Elora; Mr. Jas. Bolan, Springfield, Mass.; and to Messrs. W. J. Morris, Harry Morris, Jas. Knox, J. S. Wilson, Cyrus Davis, Nelson Covell, E. M. Morgan, Andrew McCoy, Andrew Drummond, Thos H. Scott, Matthew Scott Mrs. Sherritt, James King, James McLaren, Geo. Hone, Geo. Carpenter, Chas. Mackey, John P. Fraser, J. F. Kennedy, Jas. Graham, Thomas Moffat, J. W. Borrowman, Jas: Jackson, Mrs. Smith, W. H. Blair, Daniel McDonald, James Walker, John Coutts, R. McLean, John F. Moore, Andrew Paul, Miles Brown and Austin Keays, all of whom have contributed through Dr. T. W. Beeman, to make the collection from Lanark county as nearly as possible a thoroughly representative

one.

Mr. W. J. Moule, the artist, has taken pains to make the drawings for this report as accurate as possible, and the engravings made by the Central Press Agency have been capitally reproduced, by the photozincographic process.

NOTES.

"The student who applies the comparative method to the study of human customs and institutions is continually finding usages, beliefs, or laws existing in one part of the world that have long since ceased to exist in another part; yet where they have ceased to exist they have often left unmistakable traces of their former existence. In Australia we find types of savagery ignorant of the bow and arrow in aboriginal North America, a type of barbarism familiar with the art of pottery, but ignorant of domestic animals or of the use of metals; among the earliest Romans, a higher type of barbarism, familiar with iron and cattle, but ignorant of the alphabet. Along with such gradations in material culture we find associated gradations in ideas, in social structure, and in deep-seated customs. Thus some kind of fetichism is apt to prevail in the lower stages of barbarism and some form of polytheism in the higher stages. "In the most advanced societies we find numerous traces of such states of things as now exist only among savage or barbarous societies. Our own ancestors were once polytheists, with plenty of traces of fetichism. They were organized in clans, phratries, tribes. There was a time when they used none but stone tools and weapons, when there was no private property in land, and no political structure higher than the tribe. Among the forefathers of the present civilized inhabitants of Europe are unmistakable traces of human sacrifices, and of the reckoning of kinship through the mother only. When we have come to survey large groups of facts of this sort, the conclusion is irresistibly driven home to us that the more advanced societies have gone through various stages now represented here and there by less advanced societies; that there is a general path of social development, along which, owing to special circumstances, some peoples have advanced a great way, some a less way, some but a very little way, and that by studying existing savages and barbarians we get a valuable clue to the interpretation of pre-historic times. All these things are to-day cominon-places among students of history and archæology; sixty years ago they would have been scouted as unintelligible and idle vagaries. Yet to this change is entirely due the superior power of modern historical methods. Formerly the historian told anecdotes or discussed particular lines of policy; now he can do that as much as ever, but he can also study nation-building, and discern some features of the general drift of events from the earliest to the most recent times."-John Fiske, Pop. Science Monthly, Sept, 1891. pp. 585. 586.

With the advance of time, interest increases in all that relates to the early condition of man. The words ethnology, anthropology and archæology are rapidly becoming as common as geology astronomy and geography. Everything that illustrates a point in the life-history of existing primitive peoples is carefully noted; comparisons instituted, and conclusions either arrived at or attempted. A German traveller recently discovered a tribe of cave dwellers in Africa, and, thereupon, curiosity was aroused as to how the manners and customs of these modern troglodytes would bear out conclusions arrived at from an examination of ancient cave dwellings in France, Belgium and England. Notwithstanding racial distinctions and lapse of time, the results of the comparison were said to be highly satisfactory.

But, although much has been written, especially during the last half century, on the beginnings and growth of society, one still hears a frequent repetition of the query, What does it matter to us how a lot of savages lived a hundred or a thousand years ago? A query of this kind always embodies a sneer; a sneer implying that time devoted to such matters is spent foolishly or absolutely thrown away.

"We are too apt," says Reclus,* " to look down scornfully from the heights. of modern civilization upon the mental processes of former times, upon the ways of feeling, acting and thinking, which characterise human aggregations anterior How often we scoff without knowing anything about them! We have fancied that the ethnology of inferior races was nothing but a medley of * Èlie Reclus in "Primitive Folk," 1890, p. vii.

to our own.