236 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1900. 



over the side of the ounoe; the .sturgeon, seeing this light, mounted to 

 the surface, where it was shiin and captured with a lizgig/ 



Dr. Fewkes calls attention to walrus-ivory spear points in Nova 

 Scotia similar to those used by the Eskimo. The walrus frequented 

 the coast of Prince Edward Island within historic times. The points 

 are not definitely described.^ 



ARCTIC HARPOONS. 



The Eskimo harpoons are of every variety, barbed or toggle. 

 The dependence of the ])eople largely on aquatic animals for food, 

 dress, house, furniture, tools, and utensils of all sorts makes some 

 kind of retrieving device absolutely necessary. They use the lance 

 also most effectively, but the weak spear, with which the Indian tribes 

 are wont to pick fish from the water, would be of little use among the 

 Eskimo. The variety of animal life, both in size and habit, as well as 

 differences of terrestrial conditions, have stimulated the Eskimo mind 

 to the utmost in devising the most varied additions to what was in the 

 beginning quite simple. Here, also, along the Arctic shore, more 

 than in all other environments of the Western Hemisphere combined, 

 suggestions of improvement have come from without. It is nature's 

 pedagogic institute. More than that, harpoon heads, large and small, 

 of most appropriate patterns, have been made by machinery and traded 

 to the Eskimo by whalers and fur hunters. In this part of the paper 

 the specimens will be described as they occur. The question of the 

 derivation of each feature will then be more easily settled. 



A. B. Meyer calls attention to this and says that the little toggle 

 heads of harpoons were not invented in their present form. Semper 

 encountered them among the Negritos of the Palanan, north coast of 

 Luzon, for pig shooting, in the form of harpoon arrows. Meyer 

 describes an example from Bataan, after A. Schadenberg, and figures 

 examples from Palanan and Bataan. All of these have 3-feathered 

 shafts, spindle-shaped loose shafts, attached to both head and shaft by 

 a short line, and iron heads, including both barb and toggle charac- 

 teristics. The barbs are sometimes at right angles to the plane of the 

 line hole, in other examples in the same plane. In some the toggle 

 head has a conical projection for a socket, the latter being on the end 

 of the loose shaft. Of the last-named pattern the Eskimo examples 

 have no parallel forms.'' 



The Eskimo province may be divided into the following areas or 

 subdivisions: 



Area 1. East Greenland, west Greenland, Labrador, and Hudson 

 Bay. 



' John Josselyn, Two Voyages to New England, 1674, p. 140. 

 ^ American Antiquarian, XVIII, 1896, p. 6. 



'A. B. Meyer, Die Negritos, IX, folio series, publications of the Eoyal Dresden 

 Museum, p. 14, figs. 1 and 2; pi. vi, figs. 2 and 3; pi. viii, figs. 1 and 2. 



