During the years 1885 to 1889, while excavations were being made at the port of Bremen at the mouth of the Weser, as many as seven of these dug-outs were found in the alluvial land at depths of from 6½ feet to 13 feet below the present level of the surface. They were made of oak-trunks, and had apparently been fashioned by axes. They were as usual flat-bottomed, without keels, but with prow cut obliquely and with holes for the insertion of oars. Of the seven four were entirely demolished, but of the remaining three the dimensions were respectively: 35 feet long by 2 feet 6 inches wide; 33 feet 4 inches long by 3 feet 6 inches; 26 feet 7 inches by 3 feet 3 inches. The height varied from 1 foot 5 inches up to 2 feet 2 inches. Several specimens of this type are preserved in the municipal museum of Bremen. So much, then, for the earliest type of craft. We have seen that the dug-out in the course of time became strengthened with ribs. The next stage in the advancement of the prehistoric shipbuilder is to dispense with the strenuous work which necessitated the hollowing out of a whole tree trunk of hard oak. The affixing of ribs has given him an idea. So, utilising the hides of the wild animals which he has shot whilst hunting, he stretches these over the same framework that he had used for strengthening his oak-trunk. He is still in the Stone Age, so nails are not yet invented. The skins have to be sewn together to fit the framework, and the result is precisely that of the coracle even now used in Wales and off Connemara. If the reader should happen never to have seen one of these, a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum will quickly clear up any misunderstanding. Though we have no actual specimens of ancient skin-ships existing—and indeed we should not expect such a relic—yet the interesting survival of the boat-building language of that primitive time is found both in the Norwegian and English language of to-day. Thus, when you have allowed a ship to lie high and dry in the summer sun so that the planking warps and daylight can be seen through, what is the expression you would use to express this? Would you not remark that she has opened her _seams_? Now “seam” is an Anglo-Saxon word connoting the joining together of two edges of some texture by means of a needle. But let us take a further instance. Do you not constantly hear shipbuilders and designers refer to the planking that covers a ship’s ribs as her _skin_? Thus we have still in common use the very words which our sires employed in reference to the sewn hides of their primitive craft. Indeed, when one considers that all through history, even until now, shipbuilding has been an industry apart from ordinary occupations, and that both ships and seamen are, as we said in our introductory chapter, the most conservative of all peoples or created things, this survival is not so unnatural as might seem at first. We could continue to give other