EMPLOYMENT OF SEWING-NEEDLES. 137 



(1777) " these islanders lived in holes which they had hollowed out for themselves 

 in the ground. They possessed no domestic animal, not even the dog ; and they 

 had nothing but stone and bone as the materials for arms and household 

 implements : they lived on fish and the flesh of such quadrupeds as they could 

 take by hunting, and the remains of which, accumulated in their subterranean 

 habitations, exhaled a strong odour : their clothing was made of the skins of 

 different animals and sewn with thread made of sinew. Nevertheless the women 

 displayed an extreme coquetry in some of the details of their attire. Their out- 

 door garments were composed of the belly-skin of different birds ; and, though 

 they had but a poor knowledge of the art of tanning, they were very adroit 

 sempstresses; and the borders of their robes or dresses were very prettily 

 embroidered. They also applied embroidered bands to their caps made of the 

 skins of the Grebe and Diver. These embroiderings were very ingenious. They 

 were made with fish-bones, which served for needles, and with sinews of quadrupeds, 

 which they know how to split and prepare as thread"*. 



Thus, among this people, having no flocks to supply them with wool for their 

 garments deprived too of -textile plants such as could be converted into thread 

 the instinct of coquetry still showed itself in the luxury of embroideries, which 

 the women were reduced to execute with fish-bones for needles, and sinews for 

 thread. 



Judging, then, by what we have found in their household works of arts, the 

 women of the Prehistoric Aborigines of Pe"rigord, in the Reindeer Age, must 

 have had more advantages, at least in some points of view ; and their needles, 

 various in size and form, sufficiently denote that they could use them for handi- 

 work of divers kinds. 



If, now, the reader looks at fig. 6, in B. Plate XVII., he will observe on an 

 Implement made of Reindeer Antler, and unfortunately broken at both ends, the 

 engraved outline of an object which appeaxs to us to be a human hand, with 

 slender and somewhat over-long fingers. There remain only four fingers and a 

 portion of the upper metacarpal surface, behind which we can recognize a series 

 of chevrons or lines broken at a recurrent angle. At first sight these chevron 

 lines might be taken for marks of tattooing, such as are still in our own times 

 made on this part of the forearm among some savages. The figured specimen, 

 however, does not show any contraction behind the hand, where the wrist should 

 be ; and therefore we are led to suppose that this part is covered, as far as the 

 back of the hand, by a garment or sleeve ornamented with embroidery or with 



* See also ' Russia' &c., 3 vols. Svo, London, 1780, vol. iii. pp. 209-213. 



