Some of the appliances and apparatus which were acquired in the pursuit of these pleasures have become of antiquarian value, for many of them are curious and represent amusements almost forgotten. Others tell of the steady survival of the oldest games and amusements, but show the developments and alterations which have gone on in the methods of playing or in the appliances which have been invented to enhance the interest in those delights. These changes are seen more especially in sports and games of skill. As an instance, we may take one of the great manly sports, that of hunting game, a custom surviving from days when this England of ours was a wild and uncultivated forest and swamp, full of strange birds and many wild animals roamed therein. The flint-pointed arrow of primitive man was but the beginning in the evolution of arms. In the relics of these former plays and sports there is much to admire, and many objects to collect. There is something very pathetic about the household relics of the playroom and the nursery. Many little articles of clothing and valueless toys and trinkets are retained by a fond mother years after her offspring has grown up. They remind her of her early married life, and very often of children who have played in the nursery but who never lived to grow up. These pathetic relics have been carefully preserved for at least one generation. Then their associations have been forgotten, and those into whose hands they fall probably know nothing of their origin; to them they are merely curios. A sympathetic feeling may have induced a new owner to retain them for a little while longer, although of no great intrinsic value; but oftener than not they have been kept as connecting links between the old and the new, and thus they have been handed on until their age alone would make them collectable curios in this day of reverence for all things old! [Illustration: FIG. 90.--CURIOUS TYPES OF WHISTLES.] [Illustration: FIG. 91.--QUAINT OLD TOY. (_In the possession of Mr. Phillips, of Hitchin._)] There has been a remarkable sequence in the toys of children of all generations, and of races far apart. The same games have been played, and the same toys used. Now and then a child more careful than usual preserves his or her toys when grown to man's or woman's estate; but such collections are rare. There are some noted collections, however, which have passed into the range of museum curios, grouped together as representative of the period when they were played with--authentic records of the playthings of that day. In Fig. 91 there is a remarkable old toy now in the diversified collection of household curios and antique furniture of Mr. Phillips, of the Manor House, Hitchin. Dolls.