examples in the pertinacity of ancient seafaring expressions, but that would only be to digress from the immediate subject before us. We need only make reference to the interesting fact that Cæsar during his first Spanish campaign in the civil war, when he required some boats at the banks of the river Sicoris to get across, ordered the soldiers to make boats of the build that they had learned in former years from the British use. Thus first the keel was obtained and ribs were fashioned of light stuff; the rest of the boat’s body being then woven together of osiers and finally covered with hides.[31] According to Pliny the Britanni also in the first century of our era put to sea in wicker vessels done round with a covering of ox hide. In such vessels they would take a six days’ voyage to the Island of Mictis, whence the tin came. We come now to the Bronze and Iron Ages. With the advent of metals we find a revolution scarcely inferior to that caused by the discovery of the edged stone. For whereas the latter could cut, yet its efforts were confined within narrow limitations. It was capable of felling a tree and of hollowing out its trunk with the expenditure of considerable labour and tediousness, yet that was its highest achievement in the department of shipbuilding. But now that the introduction of metals, of iron and bronze, is made, the primitive man finds that his sphere of energy is vastly widened. Instead of hollowing out the tree he cuts it up into planks. Instead of having to sew the outside together with thongs of hide, he has metallic nails as fastenings. To the same kind of ribs that framed his skin-boat, he can now nail down planks of oak and fir. He has a lighter and more easily propelled boat than the dug-out, and a stronger and more seaworthy ship than that made of stretched skins, although it is only fair to observe that the hide-boat was capable of far more than one would suppose. Mr. Jochelson in the account of the Jesup Expedition already referred to, relates his experience of being taken for a sail in one of the skin-boats of the Koryak. He was delighted by the endurance which the skins (of seal) exhibited. Not the least remarkable feature was the fact that the skin was capable of sustaining enormous weights without bursting. But in Europe our ancestors must have been glad to be able to discard the hide for that of wood, since the wear and tear in beaching on rock, pebble, or snag, exposed them to instant uselessness.