The first tool to be dealt with is the saw. Its antiquity is indicated by many classical references, and there are references in Isaiah to saws and planes. Illustrations of various saws from earliest times are shown in Fig. 1, but it should be clearly understood that these are shown as interesting examples characteristic of certain periods, rather than an attempt to show definite"evolution".

Fig. 1.

The example, Fig. 1, No. 1, shows a chert saw of Egyptian origin. Chert is a kind of stone, which here has been worked by a curious chipping process so as to produce a serrated edge. The particular uses of this type are not definitely known, but it is presumed to have been chiefly for bone and meat sawing.

No. 2 on the same page is, like the above, in the British Museum. It is a harpoon, and was produced in a fashion similar to that employed in the Egyptian chert saw. These belong to the European and Egyptian Stone Ages respectively.

No. 3 illustrates a Swiss saw, after Lubbock, the blade of which resembles the first example, and is fixed into a wooden handle. The reason for the hole is not clear. The use of this tool was probably also for bone and wood used in the early Swiss lake dwellings. The Egyptian iron saw, illustrated in No. 4 on the same page, is a particularly fine example, and appears to have been suggested by a sickle. The blade of this implement is of iron, and it is secured to the handle by insertion, with an iron ferrule for extra security. The comparative absence of timber-producing trees indicates the reason for so many early structures being made of stone, or, as is frequently the case with tombs, hewn from the solid rock. Authorities on ancient Egyptian architecture assert that timber was used to a considerable extent in prehistoric times, producing in support of this theory evidences of stone dwellings of a later period, which have obviously been inspired by earlier wooden dwellings.

No. 2a illustrates another Egyptian saw in the form of a knife with one serrated edge. It cannot be decided which is the earlier of these two types, and their uses can only be surmised.

The illustrations Nos. 6 and 7 show two saw knives of Australian origin. They consist of sharks' and animals' teeth fixed in the first case by embedding in gum. They were used more as knives than saws.

The second example of this type, No. 7, is a particularly interesting specimen, consisting of teeth laced into a wooden handle in a most ingenious fashion.

The tools shown in Nos. 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, are all of English origin. The first of the latter series is, together with No. 8, exhibited in the Guildhall Museum of the City of London.

No. 5 is prehistoric, whilst the example No. 8 was excavated in London Wall, and was probably attached to a handle by the insertion of the tang, and secured by pinning through both handle and tang, as is indicated by the example. A mediaeval frame saw is illustrated in No. 10, used chiefly for cross cutting;

"deeping,or splitting logs from end to end in planks, etc., was doubtless effected by means of the pit saw, the use of which still remains in country districts. A two-handled cross-cut saw is illustrated in No. 9. These were used also for splitting small logs, the latter being fixed in a vertical position. During the eighteenth century veneers also were cut in this manner, as an examination of authentic old work will show. The illustration No. 11 is of a pit saw. the use of which is now almost entirely superseded by machine saws. It was and still is used to some extent for deep cutting a log from end to end. The log is wedged above a"pitor well hole, and one sawyer is above the log, the other below. The cut is made on the downward stroke, and it is necessarily a tedious process compared with up-to-date vertical frame sawing, by which twelve or more cuts can be made simultaneously through a log 2 ft. and upwards in diameter.

No account of saws, however brief, would be complete without mention of Japanese saws. These are fashioned as illustrated in Fig. 2, and, as will be seen from the diagram, the teeth are spaced in an opposite direction to those of English saws. They resemble large carving knives, and the cut is made on the backward stroke instead of on the forward one, as is the case with the English pattern. Native Japanese craftsmen are remarkable adepts in the use of these tools, some of which have teeth on both edges, thus combining two grades of cutting edges in one instrument. In the Pitt-Rivers Collection at Oxford are some interesting models of these tools.

Fig. 2.