34 INTRODUCTION 



Prehistoric Man often with a limited local supply was 

 driven to adopt and adapt any material which could be forced 

 into his purpose of a hook. To this cause has been ascribed 

 one of the most extraordinary hooks on record. This relic, now 

 in the Berlin Museum, of the lacustrine dwellers is formed out 

 of the upper mandible of an eagle, notched down to the base. 



But the most interesting natural fish-hook known to me (found 

 in Goodenough Island, New Guinea) is the thick upper joint 

 of the hind leg of an insect, Eurycantha latro, furnished, however, 

 only by the male, who is endowed with the long, stout recurved 

 spur, suitable for fishing. The leg joints and therefore the 

 hooks got from them (about if inches long) are supphed 

 ready made by Nature : they merely require to be fastened to 

 a tapered snood of twisted vegetable matter for immediate 

 employment.! 



Where flints, shells, and horn were absent or, if present, 

 were not turned to account, an abundance of thorns with bend 

 and point ready made and with proved capacities of piercing 

 and holding would attract the notice and serve the purpose of 

 the New Stone Man. Such later on was the case in Babylon 

 and Israel (in both of which countries the primary sense of 

 the word equalling hook seems, according to some authorities, 



hooks bear out this view {Ency. Brit., ed. xi., s.v. '' Angling "). " The pro- 

 gressive order of hooks used by the Indians or their predecessors in title in 

 North America was, after the simple device of attaching the bait to the end 

 of a fibrous line, (i) a gorge, a spike of wood or bone, sharpened at both ends 

 and fastened at its middle to a line ; (2) a spike set obliquely in the end of a 

 pliant shaft; (3) a plain hook ; (4) a barbed hook ; {5) a barbed hook combined 

 with sinker and lure. This series does not exactly represent stages of inven- 

 tion : the evolution may have been affected by the habits of the different 

 species of fish or their increasing wariness. The above progressive order 

 applies, I believe, on the whole all over the world, if due allowance be made 

 for varying conditions" {Smithsonian Handbook of American Indians 

 (Washington), p. 460). 



^ See Man, Feb., 1915, " Note on the new kind of Fish-hook," by Henry 

 Balfour. The illustration is reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. H. 

 Balfour and the Royal Anthropological Institute. 



Another notable hook is one of wood about four inches long with a claw 

 (said to be that of a bird) attached, which Vancouver collected on his voyage 

 in N.W. American waters (see Ethnographical Coll. at Brit. Mus.). The 

 whalebone in this must not be mistaken for anything else but a snood. For 

 the ingenious derivation of certain hooks in some South Sea Islands from their 

 similarity to the bones of common fish, e.g. Cod and Haddock, seeT. McKenny 

 Hughes, in ArchcBol. Jour., vol. 58, No. 230, pp. 199-213. See also J. G. 

 Wood, Nature's Teaching (London, 1877), pp. 11 5-6, on the point. 



