PRIMEVAL DEXTERITY. 133 
while the base rested on the buckskin cushion in the palm. The 
point of the smaller deer-horn prong, not exceeding one-sixteenth of 
an inch square, was brought to bear on the part of the side where 
the notch should be ; a sawing motion made the chips fly to right 
and left, and in less than a minute it was cut to the necessary depth. 
The other side was then completed in like manner, and the arrow- 
head was finished in about forty minutes. 
In the above narrative the use of the right hand in all the active 
manipulations of the Indian arrow-maker is assumed ; though probably 
with no conscious purpose of emphasising what is the ordinary and 
normal practice. But the details are in other respects full of interest 
from the light we may assume them to throw on the method pursued 
by the primitive implement makers of the earliest stone age. Dr. 
Evans describes and figures a class of flint tools recovered from time 
to time, the edges of which, blunted and worn at both ends, suggest 
to his experienced eye their probable use for chipping out arrow- 
heads and other small implements of flint, somewhat in the fashion 
detailed above with the tool of deer’s horn; and which we may, 
perhaps, presume were used before the discovery of the greater apti- 
tude of horn or bone tools for the object in view. Some of the flint- 
flakers are carefully wrought into the form best adapted for being held 
in the hand of the workman. But whether fashioned by means of 
flint or horn fabricator, the material to be operated upon has to be 
held in one hand, while the tool is dexterously manipulated with the 
other. Signor Craveri, whose long residence in Mexico gave him 
very favourable opportunities for observing the process of the native 
workers in obsidian, remarks that, when the Indians “ wish to make 
an arrow or other instrument of a splinter of obsidian, they take the 
piece in the left hand, and hold grasped in the other a small goat’s 
horn. They set this piece of obsidian upon the horn, and dexter- 
ously pressing it against the point of it, while they give the born a 
gentle movement from right to left, and up and down, they disengage 
from it frequent chips ; and in this way obtain the desired form.”* 
Again, in an account communicated to Sir Charles Lyell by Mr. 
Cabut, of the mode of procedure of the Shasta Indian arrow-makers, 
after describing the detachment of a piece from the obsidian pebble 
with the help of an agate chisel, he thus proceeds: ‘‘ Holding the 
* Translated from Gastaldi. See Evans’ Stone Implements, p. 36. 
