468 WILLIAM THALBITZER. 
today the word is spelt exalugssuar. In my quotation from OLEARIUS 
an additional printer's error has unfortunately crept in. 
р. 405. — Hr. THoMSEN’s remarks anent my observations on the 
shark’s tooth knives seem to me to be somewhat superfluous, and in 
part irrelevant. He points out, quite correctly, that shark's tooth knives 
can be single-edged!. But my description of the double-edged shark's 
tooth knives, which are of far more frequent occurrence than the former 
type, is in accordance with the facts, and the knives with stone cutting 
edges from Southampton Island I have myself referred to. (Our Euro- 
pean distinction, by the way, between the two materials, metal and 
stone, would hardly be understood by the Eskimo, who have never 
been in contact with European culture; to them iron is probably merely 
a kind of stone). — The paper by JAPETUS STEENSTRUP, to which Hr. 
THOMSEN refers in this connection, I have myself also quoted, viz; on 
p. 488 in my book, where I dwell onthe knives described by STEENSTRUP 
from West Greenland, made with small “iron plates which were fixed 
in a groove along the edge of a bone haft”; i. e. resembling the Austra- 
lian native type of knife (or saw) with a row of small flint flakes set 
in a resinous mass along a handle?. 
Hr. THomsEn concludes with some fantastic conjectures as to 
what he imagines to have been my object in mentioning the ethno- 
graphical parallel. 
Umiak cleaner or boathook. 
р. 406. — An umiak or a kayak intended for paddling about among 
the ice-floes of the East Greenland sea might well find some use for a 
boathook, and even a short one would be handy at times. The so-called 
umiak cleaners (Нотм) are known only from Ammassalik, whereas 
boathooks of similar form, but longer, are well known among the Labra- 
dor Eskimo, and now also from West Greenland (see PorsıLp 1915, 
p. 247). 
Harpoons. 
p. 407—408. — In my book (1914, p. 411) I raised the question 
of a detail in the technical construction of the harpoon, to wit, the me- 
thod of joining the foreshaft and the loose shaft, as my experience in 
East Greenland did not bear out the earlier description of this point 
given by Oris Mason. I therefore directed my criticism towards this 
writer, albeit with all due respect for his ethnographical work, and Hr. 
THOMSEN admits that I am right thus far. On the other hand, I may 
acknowledge that I was beyond the mark in supposing that my criticism 
could also be extended to apply to the harpoons from the West Coast 
1 See Medd. om Grønland, vol. 10, Pl. XXVI. 
2 BAHNSON, Ethnografien, vol. I, 18 (fig. 11, c). 
