Year: 1876

DIR. Arthur Mitchell, an eminent Brit
ish antiquary, has been delivering in
Edinburgh a course of lectures on the
question. "Do We possess the means of
determining scientifically the condition
of primeval man and his age on the
earth?"-In them he has described a
number of achaic customs with which
he had come in contact in the remoter
districts of Scotland. In Fetlar, for in
stance, his finding a boy carving
"whorl" ont of soapstone led to the dis
covery that the primitive mode of spin
ming by a spindle weighted with a stone
whori was still the only method in use
on the island. although in certain parts
of the mainland of Shetland, and quite
within hail of Fetlar, there remained
no knowledge among the people either
of the existence or use of the spindle or
whorl. At Daviot, in Iverness-shire,
he found woman spinning with spin
die weighted with potato instead of
whorl. This most primitive form of
earliest of the industrial arts was thus
at this day holding its ground among a
people who had been spinning for gen
erations by means of the most complex
machinery. The art in its rudest state
existed side by side with the same art
in its greatest perfection, and both were
practiced by people the same in capacity
and, from some points Of view, the same
in culture. On the other hand, there
were districts whore the nse Of the whorl
had become extinct for a generation or
two, and in these districts. though only
this short period had elapsed since ii
WAS the commonest Of all con- mon i'm
| plementa in their households, the people
now regarded stone whorls with super
stitions veneration and had not the re-
motest idea of their true character and
use. 1t did not require more than a
century for this.


Dr. Mitchell was led to the knowl-
edge of the existence in the Lewis of
another of the primitive arts in its
primitive form by finding a stone-break-
er sitting in ditch on the roadside eat
ing his dinner out of what seemed a
aepulchral urn. On closer inspection
the vessel proved to be specimen OF
the hand made pottery which was found
to be in general use on the west coast oil
the island. II was made by women
from clay without any special prepara.
tion, shaped entirely by the hand, bnrn'
ed in an open peat fire. and its porosity
was corrected by bowlful of milk be-
ing poured over it when still red hot
Neither the rudest pottery of the Stone


Age nor of modern savage life was rudel
than this. Yet the honse in which tht
woman lived whose pottery ware he saw


manufactured, though built with un
quarried and uncemented stones, con


tanned cotton from Manchester, cutler,
from Staffordshire, tea from China, ant


sugar from the West Indies. She wa


-hrewd and intelligent, we'll versed il


ecclesiastical and poor-law questions
Yet digging on the side of her hu
J., some centuries after would show moth
ing of all tn E, except the pottery of he


own rude manufacture, and few frae


ments of the Siaffordshire ware, whic


might be accounted for by an early an


late occupation of the hut by successiv
peoples at long intervals and in differer
= stages Of civilization. The Inference


he deduced from these. and other fac


of similar nature which he had ol


served were:-(D That the very rude


known form of an art may co exist in


nation with the higest; (2) that it woul


be wrong to conclude from this that II
g nation must be composed partly of saw
n ges and partly of civilized people; ar
p ~ that persons capable of receivir
O the highest culture might practice &
IT art which belonged to the utmost pale
+ lithic men.