of magical practices, and an irrepressible craving for manslaughter. And when, presently, something of a symbolism and apparatus of superstition comes into view, in the late neolithic and bronze ages, the common run of it is by no means suggestive of superstitious fear and religious atrocities. The most common and characteristic objects of this class are certain figurines and certain symbolical elements suggestive of fecundity, such as might be looked for in a peaceable, sedentary, agricultural culture on a small scale.[79] A culture virtually without weapons, whose gods are mothers and whose religious observances are a ritual of fecundity, can scarcely be a culture of dread and of derring-do. With the fighting barbarians, on the other hand, male deities commonly take the first rank, and their ritual symbolises the mastery of the god and the servitude of the worshipper. It is true, of course, that both of weapons and of cult objects far the greater number that were once in use will have disappeared, since most of the implements and utensils of stone-age cultures are, notoriously, made of wood or similar perishable materials.[80] So that the finds give no complete series of the appliances in use in their time; whole series of objects that were of first-rate importance in that culture having probably disappeared without leaving a trace. But what is true in this respect of weapons and cult objects should be equally true of tools, or nearly so. So that the inference to be drawn from the available material would be that the early neolithic culture of north Europe, the Ægean, and other explored localities presumed to belong in the same racial and cultural complex, must have been of a prevailingly peaceable complexion. With the advance in technology and in the elaboration and abundance of objects that comes into sight progressively through the later neolithic period, down to its close, this disproportion between tools and weapons (and cult objects) grows more impressive and more surprising. Hitherto this disproportion has been more in evidence in the Scandinavian finds than in the other related fields of stone-age culture, unless an exception should be made in favour of the late neolithic sites explored at Anau.[81] But this archæological outcome, setting off the Baltic stone age as peculiarly scant of weapons and peculiarly rich in tools, may be provisional only, and may be due to the more exhaustive exploration of the Scandinavian countries and the uncommonly abundant material from that region. In the later (mainly Scandinavian) neolithic material, where the weapons are to be counted by dozens the tools are to be counted by hundreds, according to a scheme of classification in which everything that can be construed as a weapon is so classed, and there are many more hundreds of the one class than there are dozens of the other.[82] As near as can be made out, cult objects are similarly infrequent among these