398 THOMAS THOMSEN. 
sharpening knives”, He might even have read, what he himself had 
written, in his own English edition of the same work, the following pas- 
sage: “A whetting iron inserted in a handle of wood is used for grinding 
knives with (fig. 218c)’’! — referring, it will be noted, to this very figure. 
These two instances, then, the water vessel and the whetting irons, 
serve to confirm the truth of the Editor’s own very apt remark, which 
might well be taken as a motto for any ethnographical work based on 
museum studies: “It ıs a good thing to have a photograph of an ethno- 
graphic object, but still better to study it in the hand, view it from all 
sides, and possibly make a sketch of 12”. 
IRON-BLADED CHISEL. 
The whetting iron is ethnologically interesting as representing a 
certain type of implement; the importance of various iron tools occa- 
sionally found, on the other hand, lies in the fact of their illustrating 
the manner in which odd scraps of iron accidentally acquired are utilised 
by the finder to serve his own particular needs. 
A specimen of such more occasional implements is the little iron 
chisel, fastened to a handle by thongs, which is shown in THALBITZER’s 
Fig. 189, but there erroneously described as a hammer. 
The illustration in itself should suffice to show the inaccuracy of 
this. The position in which the blade is fixed to the handle alone renders 
it impossible. The tool might with more excuse have been described 
as an axe. The blade is, however, quite small and light, with a distinct 
chisel edge at the one end, and evident marks of having been driven 
by a hammer at the other. All this might have been discovered by mere 
observation. 
Here again, however, other sources of information were likewise 
open to the Author had he cared to use them. The tool in question is, 
in the first place, like the whetting iron just mentioned, shown in an 
illustration of that very work of which Mr. THALBITZER’s book is a new 
and improved edition, and is there described as а chisel®. And in the 
second place, Mr. THALBITZER would, as a linguist, have had excellent 
opportunities of discovering, by actual inquiry among the Eskimo them- 
selves, what was the true purpose of the implement. As to this, he remarks, 
on р. 678: “The word ilageen which I have erroneously given for a hammer 
like that seen in Fig. 189 means ,a wedge for splitting wood’, possibly 
also a celt, a chisel”. And we are further told: “The Eskimo, who was 
shown the illustration of a hammer in Hozm’s book, evidently considered 
I Тнагв. Ш, р. 95: 
2 ТнАгв. II, р. 327. 
3 Medd. om Grønland, vol. 10. Plate XVIIIg. 
