20 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



the cave-men. "The harpoon," he says, " was a small dart of reindeer-horn, very 

 like the large barbed arrows, except that the barbs were only on one side ; a 

 slight protuberance at the base allowed a cord to be attached, which was held in 

 the hand of the fisherman. It has been frequently, and is still, confounded with 

 the arrow. It is clear that an arrow barbed only on one side would be very 

 defective in flight, as it describes a long curve ; its course is necessarily affected 

 by the resistance of the air which sustains it ; but in the short flight of the 

 harpoon this inconvenience is much less, and besides, the direction of the harpoon 

 is downward, and it does not need to be sustained by the air. The instrument 

 barbed only on one side is then not an arrow, and must be a harpoon. The use 

 of its barbs was to catch and retain the fish after it was struck ; but why were 

 they all upon one side ? To diminish the width of the dart so that it might 

 penetrate more readily ? I cannot say. 



" One of my colleagues, M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, in a communication before 

 the anthropological section, makes some very interesting remarks upon the mode 

 of action of the unilateral barbs of the harpoon. While passing through the 

 air, these barbs do not cause the harpoon to deviate perceptibly, but as soon as 

 it enters the water, the unequal resistance it encounters must necessarily change 

 its direction. It would seem, then, that the fisherman who aimed straight for 

 the fish would miss it. Now, it is well known that a straight stick appears to be 

 broken when plunged obliquely in water ; in like mariner, in consequence of the 

 refraction of the luminous rays, the image of the fish is displaced, and if direct 

 aim were taken at this image, it would also be missed. Here are, then, two 

 causes of error. Now, it is evident that if they can be brought to act in opposite 

 directions, they will counteract each other, and M. Lecoq shows that when the 

 barbed side is turned downward, the harpoon will reach its destination. This 

 arrangement of the harpoon was then intended to rectify its course, which 

 indicates great sagacity of observation in our troglodytes. 



"The inhabitants of Terre-de-Feu still use a harpoon barbed on one side 

 only."* 



At this day, however, the Eskimos and Indians of the Northwest Coast of 

 America use harpoons with heads barbed either on one side or on both. As an 

 example I represent in Fig. 19 a seal-harpoon, about five feet long, used by the 

 Eskimos of Bristol Bay, in Alaska. Fig. 20 shows its upper part enlarged. 

 The head, made of walrus-ivory, barbed on both sides, and provided with an 

 eye, fits with its tapering lower end into a corresponding cavity in a kind of 

 socket, made of bone, into which the wooden shaft is inserted. An inflated 



*Broca- The Troglodytes; p. 329. A Fuegian bone harpoon-head, eight inches and five-eighths long, 

 having a single barb on each side, is figured in " Reliquite Aquitanicse," II, p. 179. It was obtained, with 

 others, during the voyage of the " Beagle." Reference will be made hereafter to the fine series of bone harpoon- 

 heads from Tierra del Fuego in the United States National Museum. 



