THE PREHISTORIC HUNTER. 



By ALFRED M. MAYER. 



BY hunting and fishing the prehistoric man obtained his sub- 

 sistence, and in these pursuits were his greatest pleasures. 

 It may then be of interest to the modern sportsman — who, 

 begging his pardon, is himself a good deal of a savage — to know 

 something of this ancient brother hunter and angler, from whom he 

 has inherited his love of sport and his savage instincts. 



Thanks to the wonderful discoveries of quite recent days, we 

 can now give the history of man as a hunter and angler from his 

 first known appearance on earth to the present day. We first find 

 him living in the river-valleys of Europe and of this country, his 

 only weapons of the chase being pieces of flint rudely chipped into 

 roughly pointed forms. Thence we track him to the caves in the 

 banks of the rivers, where the fashion of his arms of flint and bone, 

 and his skill in the arts of design and carving, show that he has made 

 a notable step in his progress toward civilization. He is now a fish- 

 erman as well as a hunter. Then we see him as a dweller on the 

 shores of the sea and the borders of the fjords, and the dog 

 first appears as man's companion. Thence we trace him to the 

 lakes, where he dwells in wooden houses built on piles. He 

 wears woven fabrics as well as skins, cultivates the soil, and has 

 herds. He fashions stone into elegantly shaped tools and weapons, 

 with highly polished cutting edges. Later, he replaces these with 

 bronze implements cast in stone molds. The dog now shares 

 with man the perils and excitement of the chase and the comforts 

 of his dwelling. The pile-dweller builds canoes or dug-outs, which 

 he paddles over the lake, and he angles with spindles of bone and 

 finely shaped barbed hooks of bronze suspended to lines spun of flax. 



