The Ammassalik Eskimo. 473 
sideration, finally arrived at a more correct solution. In my earlier 
works, I have frequently expressed a provisional opinion with regard 
to a problem hitherto unsolved, or an ethnographical point not previ- 
ously described, correcting this in later publications when further study 
had placed me in a position so to do. 
And in three cases at least I have myself corrected erroneous state- 
ments in the inventories of the museums’. 
But this is by no means the first time that Hr. THOMSEN has put 
forward an accusation against me which recoils upon himself or the 
Museum. The same may be noted with regard to what Hr. THOMSEN 
is pleased to call my “peculiar methods” etc. (p. 417). I may here refer 
to my refutation of his assertions and my exposition of his own peculiar 
methods of dealing with museum studies (pp. 445 fi, 450 and 470f.) 
as also with citations of my books (е. ©. pp. 465 and 471) including 
his regrettable slips or printer’s errors (pp. 452—53). I have no need 
of going farther into Hr. THomsen’s treatment of his sources; his manner 
of dealing with one of his sources at any rate, to wit, my books, does 
not testify to any scientific spirit. 
р. 417—422. I have no desire to continue further the unravelling 
of this serpentine tangle. The pages here cited exhibit the same quali- 
ties as the foregoing, overloaded as they are with a tissue of hetero- 
geneous remarks, observations, assertions and objections, unimpor- 
tant, incorrect and prejudiced, or bearing evident witness to complete 
misunderstanding: most of them of an extremely petty character, albeit 
1 I am here referring, in the first place to my having demonstrated that 
the Eskimo bone tubes designated by the Copenhagen Museum as a kind 
of children’s plaything (ajagag) were in reality old-fashioned needlecases 
of a type once extensively in use (see my Description of the Amdrup Col- 
lection from East Greenland 1909, p. 422 and cf. my article in Baessler- 
Archiy, vol. II, 1911, p. 41 note 4). In the second place, to my correction 
of the Pfaff inventory with regard to heads of adzes from North-west 
Greenland: “three pieces for fastening the axe, two of them with a hole 
in the middle for insertion of the haft” (“tre stykker til oxens fastheftning, 
med et hul i midten for de to stykkers vedkommende til anbringelse af 
skaftet”) the text in inv. Pfaff 27 Pl. I in Stockholm Riksmuseum, Eth- 
nographical Department. This was quoted without amendment in my paper 
of 1909, p. 526 but corrected in my later work p. 432, note 1, to whaling 
harpoon heads, this being the real purpose for which the objects (figs. 
101—102) were intended. The same correction has later been made by 
Morten Porsitp (Medd. om Gronl. vol. 51, р. 144), doubtless independently 
of mine. And thirdly, I corrected the Pfaff inventory’s ‘‘toggle harpoons 
intended for sealing or salmon-spearing etc” likewise quoted by me without 
comment in 1909 (l.c. p. 500, ad figs. 79—80) to the true definition: hinged 
toggles for drag lines; this last correction will be found in my later work 
р. 433—34. The same correction has been made by Morten Porsitp ].c 
p. 189—90, independently of mine. 
