I0 EELIQUIJE AQTJITANICLE. 



Perhaps with these harpoons, much smaller in size than those of the Esquimaux, 

 our old fishermen of Perigord attacked the large freshwater Pishes which abounded 

 in their rivers* ; and perhaps, also, the shaft, detached from the harpoon, served as 

 a float to indicate where the fish went, and to check its retreat. 



There are also heads for arrows or harpoons which have harbs down one side only; 

 and it is difficult to suppose them to be anything but fishing-implements. These 

 we shall figure on another Plate. 



In most of these barbed weapon-heads there are long nicks or grooves on the 

 barbs, and almost always on both sides. These grooves are most frequently simple ; 

 but sometimes they are double ; and they follow the curve of the barbs, which 

 sometimes end in a sharp hook, and sometimes with a nearly smooth point. It has 

 been conjectured, in searching for an explanation of the probable use of these 

 grooves, that they may have served to hold a poisonous substance, active enough 

 to hasten the death of the wounded animal. In support of this supposition, one 

 may refer to the custom that some of the savages of South America have of 

 rubbing the arrows used in hunting with a poison that makes the flesh of the 

 animals so killed more tender. An historian of the eighteenth century (Dom. 

 Martin, Hist, des Gauloises) has held that the Ancient Gauls had just such a 

 practice in the chase f. 



Eig. 1. A Head of an Arrow or Harpoon, with barbs on each side. It belongs to 

 the Long-pointed type, with a round and nearly smooth point. It has eight 

 barbs, one of which has been broken ; they are arranged on the two sides, one 

 opposite to another, that is to say, opposed, and not alternate as we shall see 

 them in other specimens; they are flat, and their points are sharply curved 

 back or hooked, and hollowed on each face by grooves or nicks, intended, perhaps, 

 to lodge poison in. The stem of the weapon also bears longitudinal grooves, 

 disposed two and two on the intervals between the barbs. This weapon is 

 made of Reindeer horn, like all the others. 

 Prom La Madelaine. 



Fig. 2. Another Harpoon-head, with the apex carefully pointed; it bears eight 



* It was not very long ago, that is, before the building of certain weirs on the Dordogne Eiver, that Salmon 

 came up from the sea as far as the Vezere, which still produces abundantly Carp, Barbel, and other Cyprinoid 

 Fish. 



t Barbed weapons, somewhat similar to those described above, and bearing poison -grooves, have been 

 found in the Lower Cavern at Massat, Languedoc, by M. A. Fontan (see 'Quarterly Journal of the 

 Geological Society of London,' vol. xvii. p. 470). 



