The science of Folklore, if we may call it a science, finds everywhere, close to the surface ofcivilised life, the remains of ideas as old as the stone elf-shots, older than the celt ofbronze. In proverbs and riddles, and nursery tales and superstitions, we detect the relics ofa stage of thought, which is dying out in Europe, but which still exists in many parts of theworld. Now, just as the flint arrow-heads are scattered everywhere, in all the continentsand isles, and everywhere are much alike, and bear no very definite marks of the specialinfluence of race, so it is with the habits and legends investigated by the student offolklore. The stone arrow-head buried in a Scottish cairn is like those which were interredwith Algonquin chiefs. The flints found in Egyptian soil, or beside the tumulus on the plainof Marathon, nearly resemble the stones which tip the reed arrow of the modernSamoyed. Perhaps only a skilled experience could discern, in a heap of such arrow-heads, the specimens which are found in America or Africa from those which are unearthed inEurope. Even in the products of more advanced industry, we see early pottery, forexample, so closely alike everywhere that, in the British Museum, Mexican vases have, erenow, been mixed up on the same shelf with archaic vessels from Greece. In the same way, ifa superstition or a riddle were offered to a student of folklore, he would have muchdifficulty in guessing its provenance, and naming the race from which it wasbrought. Suppose you tell a folklorist that, in a certain country, when anyone sneezes, people say 'Good luck to you, ' the student cannot say à priori what country you refer to, what race you have in your thoughts. It may be Florida, as Florida was when firstdiscovered; it may be Zululand, or West Africa, or ancient Rome, or Homeric Greece, orPalestine. In all these, and many other regions, the sneeze was welcomed as an auspiciousomen. The little superstition is as widely distributed as the flint arrow-heads. Just as theobject and use of the arrow-heads became intelligible when we found similar weapons inactual use among savages, so the salutation to the sneezer becomes intelligible when welearn that the savage has a good reason for it. He thinks the sneeze expels an evilspirit. Proverbs, again, and riddles are as universally scattered, and the Wolufs puzzle overthe same devinettes as the Scotch schoolboy or the Breton peasant. Thus, for instance, theWolufs of Senegal ask each other, 'What flies for ever, and rests never?'-Answer, 'TheWind.' 'Who are the comrades that always fight, and never hurt each other?'-'TheTeeth.' In France, as we read in the 'Recueil de Calembours, ' the people ask, 'What runsfaster than a horse, crosses water, and is not wet?'-Answer, 'The Sun.' The Samoans putthe riddle, 'A man who stands between two ravenous fishes?'-Answer, 'The tonguebetween the teeth.' Again, 'There are twenty brothers, each with a hat on his head?