Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/222

212 of Tengu," Tengu being the guardian of heaven. The notion is also current that they are implements of the Evil Spirit, whose symbol is the fox, whence the names of "Fox-hatchet," "Fox-plane." As a fox-plane, a double-flat celt is shown in Siebold's plates, which may have served the purpose of a plane, or, if it was fixed to a handle, that of an adze. Regularly shaped stone knives (not mere flakes) are represented; some are like the stone knives of Egypt, but rougher; the Japanese recognise them as "stone-knives." Some which have been dug up are kept in the temples as relics of the time of the Kami, the spirits or divinities from whom the Japanese hold themselves to be descended, and whose worship is the old religion of the Japanese, the way or doctrine of the Kami, more commonly known by the Chinese term, Sin-tu. Some stone knives, drawn by Siebold on Japanese authority, seem to be of a slaty rock, which has admitted of their being very neatly made in curious shapes. One very highly finished specimen is called the stone knife of the "Green Dragon," a term which may be explained by the fact that the conventional dragon of Japan has a sword at the end of his tail.

Again, Java abounds in very high-class stone implements, and such things are found on the Malay Peninsula, though in both these districts the natives, unlike the Polynesians, whose language is so closely connected with theirs, do not even know what stone celts are, and hold with so many other nations that they are thunderbolts.

In India an account of the discovery by Mr. H. P. Le Mesurier of a great number of ancient stone celts was published in 1861. He found them stored up in villages of the Jubbulpore district, near the Mahadeos, and in other sacred places; and since then many more have been met with by other observers. India has now to be reckoned among countries which afford relics not only of the Stone Age, but of its ruder period of unpolished implements, preceding the more advanced period of the ground celt.

In Europe, ancient stone implements are found from east to west, and from north to south, the relics perhaps of races now