NORTH-AMEBICAN IMPLEMENTS. 39 



them. To commence with that marked " B. Plate I." All the smaller articles 

 in this sheet I believe to have been arrow-heads formed (I presume) of bone, and 

 barbed. [See descriptions in detail at pages 10-12.] The lower part is tapered 

 off so as to fit upon the wooden shaft of the arrow, babiche, or sinew in a wet 

 state, being employed to secure the junction, which, by its contractile powers in 

 drying, it would do very firmly. (By babiche, I should explain, I mean thin 

 cords of deer-parchment, such as are used by the North-American Indians for 

 similar purposes and for lacing snow-shoes, by sinew, the dorsal sinew of the 

 Deer.) The figure marked fig. 8, in particular, is very familiar to me. As may 

 be supposed, these primitive implements, as well as the arrow-heads of stone, &c., 

 are gradually becoming rarer with the spread of the white population, and the 

 introduction of firearms and more efficient implements of iron and steel. Indeed 

 it would perhaps be difficult now to find specimens in actual use. Still, among 

 the more secluded tribes, the use is not forgotten nor neglected, and especially 

 by the old men who, many of them, pertinaciously adhere to the customs of 

 their forefathers, notwithstanding the changes that take place among the rising 

 generation. In 1846, while exploring in the mountains of the north-west Coast- 

 range of British Columbia, I fell in with some native hunters engaged in the 

 chase of the Mountain-goat. Their implements were the bow and arrow the 

 arrow headed with, I believe, an exact counterpart of fig. 8. Even at that time 

 most of the tribe (the Sillooett) had guns and ammunition ; but they told me 

 they preferred the bow and arrow for their present purpose, since the Goat, if 

 not killed on the spot with the bullet, was frequently enabled to reach places 

 inaccessible to the hunters before succumbing; while with the arrow, even 

 though not instantaneously killed, the progress of a wounded animal was more 

 effectually hindered 2 . They told me, too, that the bone arrow-heads were used by 

 them chiefly, if not exclusively, in the chase of the Goat, and that when using the 

 arrow for other purposes the ordinary arrow-head of stone or iron was employed. 

 But, as I have said, the use of the bow and arrow among the tribes generally has 

 become very rare comparatively, and the arrow-heads of flint, with the knives and 

 adzes of stone, &c., are now even here a rarity. The larger implements figured 

 on the same sheet are, I believe, spear-heads. In B. PI. II. fig. 5, there is a Deer 

 transfixed apparently by a spear of this description 3 . I infer that spears were 

 planted in a "run-way," inclined at the proper angle, and that the driven herd, 

 in its effort to escape, rushed against the hidden danger, where some were 

 impaled. This inference would, I think, explain the object of fig. 7, in connexion 

 with fig. 5. There is a painting at Pompeii (engraved in Mazois *) of a gladiatorial 



