In the “Handbook” the writers have concentrated their attention upon the life of the American Indian as seen through the eyes and conceived by the brains of those familiar with Indian history of the past two centuries. Under various citations are axes, arrows, copper objects, and other artifacts treated. But these must be necessarily brief, excellent though they are. And I speak in no hostile criticism whatsoever in stating that the “Handbook of American Indians” could not take up these subjects in detail. While I highly recommend the “Handbook of American Indians,” I am persuaded that the life of the Indian of to-day is influenced by his contact with the white people; that he has drifted far away from Stone-Age times; that while there were examples of real aboriginal culture to be found in America during the past century, yet the great bulk of the natives of this country passed out of the Stone Age with the advent of the French into Canada, the Spaniards into the South, and the Puritans into New England. It seems to me that the study of all these learned individuals, the results of which are set forth in the Indian “Handbook,” has led many of them to consider prehistoric life in America as nearly the same as the life of our Indians for the past one or two centuries. I cannot believe that the arts of the past are the same to any appreciable extent as those which obtained at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and I am convinced that the tribes living at the time of Lewis and Clark practiced arts which are to-day, if not extinct, at least greatly inferior to those of ancient times. Furthermore, I do not believe that the ceremonies practiced by the tribes of to-day are of special value in measuring or understanding prehistoric life. [Illustration: FIG. 2. A block of flint from a quarry in Indian Territory. (S. 1–2.) Phillips Academy collection. See Figs. 3, 7, 11, etc., for further reduction of this form. _Explanation._ S. 1–1 means full size; S. 1–3 means one third size; etc. ] All of this does not mean that such studies have no value. On the contrary, they are of the greatest value in ethnology. What I mean is that they are of little value to the archæologist. The archæologist must live in the past, and must deal with stone, shell, bone, and clay objects, the like of which are not in use to-day. He must, through long and painstaking labors both in the field and in the museum, form his deductions. In these he is aided by numerous reports, papers, books, and other published records of explorers, travelers, archæologists, and ethnologists. But he must remember that he is studying the past and not the present—an unwritten past, in fact.