34° The Primitive Fish -Hook. 



piece of dark, polished stone. It was found in the valley of the 

 Somme, in France, and was dug out of a peat-bed twenty- two feet 

 below the surface. The age of this peat-bed has been variously 



estimated. M. Boucher de Perthes thought 

 that thirty thousand years must have elapsed 

 since the lowest layer of peat was formed. 

 The late Sir Charles Lyell and Sir John 

 Lubbock, without too strict an adherence to 

 stone fish-gorge, from the date, believed that this peat-bed represented 



VALLEY OF THE SOMME. r n ^1 1 r 



(new york museum of in its formation "that vast lapse of time 



NATURAL HISTORY.) I'll '11 r l 



which began with the commencement of the 

 Neolithic period." Later authorities deem it not older than seven 

 thousand years b. c. 



Wonderful changes have come to pass since this bit of polished 

 stone was lost in what must have been a lake. Examining this piece 

 of worked stone, which once belonged to a prehistoric man living in 

 that valley, we find it fairly well polished, though the action of count- 

 less years has slightly " weathered " or disintegrated its once smooth 

 surface. In the center, a groove has been cut, and the ends of the 

 stone rise slightly from the middle. It is rather crescent-shaped. It 

 must have been tied to a line, and this stone gorge was covered with 

 a bait ; the fish swallowed it, and, the gorge coming crosswise with 

 the gullet, the fish was captured. 



The evolution of any present form of implement from an older 

 one is often more cleverly specious than logically conclusive ; never- 

 theless, I believe that, in this case, starting with the crude fish-gorge, 

 I can show, step by step, the complete sequence of the fish-hook, until 

 it ends with the perfected hook of to-day. It can be insisted upon even 

 that there is persistence of form in the descendants of this fish-gorge, 

 for, as Professor Mitchell writes in his " Past in the Present," "an old 

 art may long refuse to disappear wholly, even in the midst of con- 

 ditions which seem to be necessarily fatal to its continued existence." 



In the Swiss lakes are found the remains of the Lacustrine dwell- 

 ers. Among the many implements discovered are fish-gorges made 

 of bronze wire. When these forms are studied, the fact must be 

 recognized at once that they follow, in shape and principle of construc- 

 tion, the stone gorges of the Neolithic period. Now, it is perfectly well 

 known that the early bronze-worker invariably followed the stone 



