502 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



examples of such implements are known under the name of 

 hollow scrapers or " racloirs en coches," both from palaeolithic 

 and neolithic deposits. 



A large rough tool, delusively similar to the head of an 

 axe, was made by striking off from a block of stone a thick 

 flake with a single blow, and dressing the side opposite the 

 surface of fracture by several blows directed more or less 

 parallel to its length. This is not unlike the ancient palaeolithic 

 implement which the French call a "coup de poing" and the 

 Germans a " Beil," i.e. an axe. In English it has no name, 

 though it was at one time very inappropriately spoken of as 

 a celt, a term never used now in this sense. Anthropologists 

 are generally agreed that the palaeolithic "coup de poing" 

 was not provided with a haft, but was held directly in the 

 hand; and that it was not used simply as a "chopper'': it is 

 extremely gratifying therefore to find that the Tasmanians had 

 no notion of hafting their homologue of the " coup de poing," 

 and that it served a variety of purposes, among others as an aid 

 in climbing trees. It was the women who were the great 

 climbers : provided with a grass rope, which was looped round 

 the tree and held firmly in the left hand, they would cut a notch 

 with the chipped stone 1 and hitch the great toe into it; then 

 adjusting the rope they would cut another notch as high, it is 

 said, as they could reach ; again hitch themselves up, and so on 

 till they attained the requisite height — sometimes as much as 

 200 feet. In this way they pursued the " opossum " up the 

 smooth trunk of the gum-tree. Many stories are told of their 

 expertness : on one occasion a party of lively girls chased 

 by sailors made a sudden and mysterious disappearance; on 

 looking round a number of laughing faces were descried among 

 the branches of the trees, into which the girls had swarmed 

 in the twinkling of an eye. 



There is great inconvenience in having no special name for 

 this kind of implement — greater perhaps than attaches to the 

 introduction of a new word ; I propose therefore to use 

 " boucher " as an equivalent of the " coup de poing," thus 

 honouring the memory of Boucher des Perthes, who was the 

 first to compel the attention of the scientific world to these 

 relics of the past. This kind of nomenclature has already been 



1 Prof. Tylor describes this as a quoit-like stone, 4 to 6 in. across, and chipped 

 about two-thirds round the edge : Journ. Anthr. Inst. 1S93, vol. xxiii. p. 142. 



