176 xMoRTEN P. Porsild. 



place, because the conditions for hunting differed. Some have now 

 become obsolete, being supplanted by the easier and more effective 

 fire-arms with which civilization has provided the Eskimo, and pro- 

 bably they will all vanish because the modern weapons also affect the 

 stock of game and change its habits. Yet we should like to esta- 

 blish the fact that we have no need to borrow from foreign 

 forms of culture in order to develop all these types and forms 

 of weapons. If the "primeval Eskimo" had had only the idea 

 of a bow and arrow with him when he came to the happy 

 hunting grounds where the whole of his wonderful culture 

 has flourished in full, then he would have had herein a 

 basis sufficient to allow of the development of all that might 

 beofusetohim. But, the idea of a bow and arrow, which is a weapon 

 common to all mankind, was I think, conceived in a milder zone. 



IX. other Hunting Implements. 

 A Sealing net of Whalebone Strings. 



As is well known, doubt has prevailed as to whether the net-catching 

 of seal and white whale could have been introduced into Greenland by 

 Europeans, or whether it is indigenous. Formerly the view that net- 

 catching was of European origin found most favour, but, by degrees, so 

 many facts have become known, that the other view now seems to be 

 best founded. The different opinions have been compared by Steensby 

 (pp. 64 — 65). Here only those of greatest importance will be considered. 



Davis has the peculiar statement about the West Greenlanders: 

 "They make nets to take their fish of the finne of the whales." This 

 statement, however, appears to have been heeded only lately, (by Parry's 

 quotation of it?). In 1821 Parry found a net of whalebone at a deserted 

 settlement in Lyon Inlet in the home of the Central Eskimo. In 1843 

 a sealing net of whalebone is said to have been delivered to the National 

 Museum in Copenhagen from the district of Julianehaab, and it is likely 

 that Inspector Holbøll in 1856 refers to this net when he states in his 

 report that about 20 years ago a net of whalebone is said to have been 

 found hanging on an iceberg in the vicinity of Julianehaab. As none 

 of the conditions for Right Whale hunting exist here this net must 

 originally have come from the east coast, and Holm also relates that 

 in tales he has heard the use of nets of whalebone mentioned. To this 

 may then be added that Fabricius (II, p. 248) relates that for hunting 

 Guillemots nets of whalebone were sometimes used. 



At Point Barrow, also, the net-catching of seal is carried on on a large 

 scale and even if it is asserted that homogeneous conditions of hunting 

 easily originate homogeneous methods of hunting, if only the means for 

 the accomplishment of this are present, there is one feature in the des- 



