in matters of
European pre-historic and proto-historic times. Any one is at liberty to
say of me what another celebrated archaeologist, Mr. Charles Hercules
Read, said, in a letter to Dr. Munro, on December 7, 1901, about some one
else: a person designated as "---," and described as "a merely literary
man, who cannot understand that to practised people the antiquities are
as readable as print, and a good deal more accurate." {7} But though
"merely literary," like Mr. "---," I have spent much time in the study of
comparative anthropology; of the manners, ideas, customs, implements, and
sacred objects of uncivilised and peasant peoples. Mr. "---" may not
have done so, whoever he is. Again, as "practised people" often vary
widely in their estimates of antique objects, or objects professing to be
antique, I cannot agree with Mr. Read that "the antiquities" are "as
readable as print,"--if by "antiquities" he means antiquities in general.
At the British Museum I can show Mr. Read several admirable specimens of
the art of faking, standing, like the Abomination of Desolation, where
they ought not. It was not by unpractised persons that they were
purchased at the national expense. We are all fallible, even the oldest
of us. I conceive Mr. Read, however, to mean the alleged and disputed
"antiquities" of the Clyde sites, and in that case, his opinion that they
are a "curious swindle" is of the most momentous weight.

But, as to practised opinion on antiquities in general, Dr. Munro and I
agree that it is really very fallible, now and again. The best
authorities, he proves, may read antiquities differently. He is not
certain that he has not himself, on occasion, taken "fakes" for true
antiques. {8a} The _savants_ of the Louvre were lately caught by the
notorious "tiara of Saitaphernes," to the pecuniary loss of France; were
caught on April 1, 1896, and were made _poissons d'Avril_, to the golden
tune of 200,000 francs (8000 pounds).

Again, M. Lartet and Mr. Christy betted a friend that he could not hoax
them with a forged palaeolithic drawing. They lost their bet, and, after
M. Lartet's death, the forged object was published, as genuine, in the
scientific journal, _Materiaux_ (1874). {8b} As M. Reinach says of
another affair, it was "a _fumisterie_." {8c} Every archaeologist may be
the victim of a _fumisterie_, few have wholly escaped, and we find Dr.
Furtwangler and Mr. Cecil Smith at odds as to whether a head of Ze