10 Kas BIRKET-SMITH. 
bow in his account of the small group of natives which he met with 
in 18231; nor do bows appear to have been found either by SCORESBY 
or by the Second German Arctic Expediton?. Зсовезву, however, did 
find, at a spot which had recently been inhabited, “the head of an arrow 
or small dart, rather neatly made of bone, armed with a small piece 
of iron’’’, in the Kgl. Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin there is a kind of 
marlinspike for twisting the backing of a bow (IV A 195), collected by 
the German expedition, and RypEr picked up, on Danmark-O in 
Scoresby Sund, the half of a bow stave in good preservation’. An- 
other piece was brought home by Млтновзт from Cape Weber, in 
Kaiser Frantz Joseph’s Fjord”, and finally we have, among the speci- 
mens brought home by the “Danmark” Expedition, several fragments 
both of compound and backed bows from the northernmost parts of 
the coast. On the other hand, bows do not appear so have been found 
on the Duke of ORLEANS’ expedition, although traces of Eskimo occupa- 
tion were encountered both at Ile de France and Cape Bismarck ®. 
Method of Use. 
The Polar Eskimo hold their bow perpendicular, with the arrow- 
shaft to the left and the nock between the extreme joints of the second 
and third fingers (the so-called “Mediterranean release”)? which position 
of the fingers is, strangely enough, not met with again in America 
until we reach the tropical regions, where, by the way, the same method 
of arrow-feathering is practised in certain parts’. The manner of holding 
the bow as practised in the Cape York District is typically Eskimo 3, 
and is doubtless the same as used in former times throughout the 
whole of Greenland. 
Backed Bows. 
Material of the Bow. 
In the backed bow, the part played by the bow stave is mainly 
that of giving the weapon the requisite rigidity, the elasticity being 
supplied for the most part by another element, the backing’. The 
1 CLAVERING, p. 21 f. 
2 cf. Zweite D. Nordpolarf. 
3 SCORESBY, p. 187. 
4 RYDER, p. 307. 
5 NATHORST, p. 344. — STOLPE, p. 104. 
6 GERLACHE, p. 12, 15, 16. 
7 STEENSBY, Polar Esk. р. 356. 
8 MEYER, p. 9. 
° Handb. Amer. Ind. p. 93. 
10 PORSILD, p. 160. 
