leviathan notions about sea-serpents and mermaids.

In our archaeological inquiries into the probable uses and import of all
doubtful articles in our museums or elsewhere, let us proceed upon a
plan of the very opposite kind. Let us, like the geologists, try always,
when working with such problems, to understand the past by reasoning
from the present. Let us study backwards from the known to the unknown.
In this way we can easily come to understand, for example, how our
ancestors made those single-tree canoes, which have been found so often
in Scotland, by observing how the Red Indian, partly by fire and partly
by the hatchet, makes his analogous canoe at the present day; how our
flint arrows were manufactured, when we see the process by which the
present Esquimaux manufactures his; how our predecessors fixed and used
their stone knives and hatchets, when we see how the Polynesian fixes
and uses his stone knives and hatchets now; how, in short, matters sped
in respect to household economy, dress, work, and war, in this old
Caledonia of ours, during even the so-called Stone Age, when we reflect
upon and study the modes in which matters are conducted in that new
Caledonia in the Pacific--the inhabitants of which knew nothing of
metals till they came in contact with Europeans, not many years ago;
how, in long past days, hand and home-made clay vessels were the chief
or only vessels used for cooking and all culinary purposes, seeing that
in one or two parts of the Hebrides this is actually the state of
matters still.

The collection of home-made pottery on the table--glazed with milk--is
the latest contribution to our Museum. It was recently brought up, by
Captain Thomas and Dr. Mitchell, from the parish of Barvas, in the
Lewis. These "craggans," jars, or bowls, and other culinary dishes, are
certainly specimens of the ceramic art in its most primitive
state;--they are as rude as the rudest of our old cinerary urns; and yet
they constitute, in the places in which they were made and used, the
principal cooking, dyeing, and household vessels possessed by some of
our fellow-countrymen in this the nineteenth century.[13] In the
adjoining parish of Uig, Captain Thomas found and described to us, two
years ago, in one of his instructive and practical papers, the small
beehive stone houses in which some of the nomadic inhabitants of the
district still live in summer. Numerous antiquarian remains, and ruins
of similar houses and c