Before concluding my remarks on the stone age in North America, I would call attention to the necessity of more and careful field work, and an understanding of the difference between various sites rather than continued museum work, or the reading of reports and publications. That man who considers arts and crafts of tribes to have been pretty much the same in America is very ignorant concerning real archæology. It has been the purpose of this volume to emphasize differences in the arts and crafts among prehistoric tribes. Archæology is like any other comprehensive subject; it requires study, discriminating care, and enthusiasm. One should further add, it requires inspiration. A man who does not love to hunt specimens for the sake of hunting them has not his heart in the work. We have had many mounds examined, plans have been drawn, the skeletons carefully set down as so many feet from each other. A report is published in regard to that mound, and instead of intelligent observations on the meaning of the evidence ascertained, there is usually nothing but a dry and statistical statement of the distances of the skeletons from a given point. Of course it is necessary to make a survey of mounds and other remains. And it is equally important to have reports, but I do not think that it is necessary to publish field notes—which are no more than survey notes—and call them a report. Many of the reports published in recent years have missed the essential thing in American archæology. They have emphasized the mathematical features of our explorations. They are as if one published tabulated census reports, but offered no explanations as to what the number and assembling of the people in the United States meant. If no conclusions of value are to be drawn from the exploration of a given site, then it seems to me that wealthy people who send out expeditions are wasting their money, and the scientists their time. We are training young men in our universities and museums to measure mounds and village-sites very carefully. All this is eminent and proper, but we are losing sight of the meaning of those same village-sites and mounds and their relation to others and to prehistoric culture in general. The explorer Stanley made a statement in his work “Darkest Africa,” which I have never forgotten. The scientist Emin Bey was much interested in examining a human skull and measuring it very carefully and setting down the measurements. Stanley was not interested in the skull. He wished to know something regarding the life of the man to whom it once belonged. If some of our students would, for a few years, lay aside cameras, ground-plans, tape-lines, and get down to real field work, much more progress would ensue. The study of sites, collections, types, and local conditions should be placed first, it seems to me.