oamed therein. The flint-pointed
arrow of primitive man was but the beginning in the evolution of arms.
In the relics of these former plays and sports there is much to admire,
and many objects to collect.

There is something very pathetic about the household relics of the
playroom and the nursery. Many little articles of clothing and valueless
toys and trinkets are retained by a fond mother years after her
offspring has grown up. They remind her of her early married life, and
very often of children who have played in the nursery but who never
lived to grow up. These pathetic relics have been carefully preserved
for at least one generation. Then their associations have been
forgotten, and those into whose hands they fall probably know nothing of
their origin; to them they are merely curios. A sympathetic feeling may
have induced a new owner to retain them for a little while longer,
although of no great intrinsic value; but oftener than not they have
been kept as connecting links between the old and the new, and thus they
have been handed on until their age alone would make them collectable
curios in this day of reverence for all things old!

[Illustration: FIG. 90.--CURIOUS TYPES OF WHISTLES.]

[Illustration: FIG. 91.--QUAINT OLD TOY.

(_In the possession of Mr. Phillips, of Hitchin._)]

There has been a remarkable sequence in the toys of children of all
generations, and of races far apart. The same games have been played,
and the same toys used. Now and then a child more careful than usual
preserves his or her toys when grown to man's or woman's estate; but
such collections are rare. There are some noted collections, however,
which have passed into the range of museum curios, grouped together as
representative of the period when they were played with--authentic
records of the playthings of that day. In Fig. 91 there is a remarkable
old toy now in the diversified collection of household curios and
antique furniture of Mr. Phillips, of the Manor House, Hitchin.

Dolls.

Probably the commonest toy is the doll, which children have ever
regarded as the ideal plaything. The maternal instinct is strong in the
youngest girl, and dolls are often looked upon as something more than
mere toys. They are talked to, played with, and treated as if they were
human beings. Their realism, at first imagined, seems to have grown up
with their long use until a personality surrounds each one of the dolls
in the nursery. Now and then