Outside Influences.
The Ethnological Gallery of the British Museum is one of the finest instructors. The silent exhibits tell the observant man or woman, boy or girl, much that cannot be learned from book knowledge. In the cases in that gallery are many objects fashioned by peoples who until recently were in their Stone Age, and had no knowledge of the outer world. There are some who from the curios—old and new—have apparently, until taught their use by travellers and traders from the far-off West, never discovered the value of metals. Some of the native races—not a few of them fellow-subjects of the Empire—as yet prefer wood, stone, and crude pottery vessels and utensils to metal, judging from the very limited use of the few brass or copper objects they possess, those few, probably, being imported. The ethnology of the race is traced in these relics, especially in the really old ones. In a few instances by way of contrast, metal objects, although so limited, are conspicuous. They are chiefly confined to the native countries brought under the influence of more advanced peoples; as instanced by the work of the Sinhalese, the natives of Ceylon, who early came into touch with the metal-workers of India. Another native race by their wealth of rare metallic curios, the art of producing which they have lost, are shown to be a people with a past; thus it is with the tribes of Southern Nigeria in and around Benin City. On the occasion of its capture by the British in 1897, it was found to possess a remarkable store of wonderful bronzes, evidently of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. In these and other native curios the collector revels, and in their study finds history, geography, and even the folk-lore of nations revealed; for in such curios there are stories in brass of social life, religious functions, ceremonies, and sacrifices.