258 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



Mr. Ball gives a long list of the mammals and birds represented by their 

 remains in the three strata into which he divides the deposit of the hunting- 

 period. Among them are various phocine and cetacean animals, and many kinds 

 of birds, such as puffins, gulls, auks, several species of eiders and other ducks, 

 etc. " Remains of houses of the half-underground type, afterward so universal, 

 appear only in the middle stratum, showing that not until then had the popula- 

 tion so multiplied and mutual confidence sufficiently matured, for the more 

 ancient, temporary, above-ground houses to begin to be supplanted by more sub- 

 stantial and comfortable structui'es."* 



During this period some cooking was done in the open air, as evidenced by 

 the discovery of stone hearths still bearing the marks of fire. A great improve- 

 ment is perceivable in the articles fashioned by the hand of man, and even 

 attempts at ornamentation are not wanting. There were found in this deposit 

 lance-heads of stone and bone, or both combined, bone harpoon-heads f of better 

 make than those discovered in the fish-bone layer, wedges, skin-dressers, and 

 awls, all of bone, stone fish-knives, dish-shaped lamps of stone, and perforated 

 articles of bone or ivory belonging to kayaks, and designed to make paddles and 

 darts fast to them. These last-named accessories to boats occurred in the upper 

 part of the mammalian layer, in which were also found bone handles for dishes 

 or baskets, bone spoons, and other articles similar to those used by the present 

 Aleuts. 



Mr. Dall's memoir is undoubtedly of great interest ; yet some of his con- 

 clusions have not passed unchallenged. I would be guilty of an omission if I 

 failed to allude to the diverging views expressed by Mr. Ivan Petroff, himself 

 for several years an explorer in those regions. 



Mr. Petroff agrees with Mr. Dall that the theory of an Asiatic influx of 

 population over the Aleutian chain of islands is entirely untenable, and that they 

 were peopled from the east, but he does not think that this migration took place 

 before the invention of the kayak, considering that there is no timber on the 

 islands, excepting drift-wood, which he considers entirely unfit for the manufac- 

 ture of canoes, or even for the construction of rafts. " The assumption," he 

 says, " that the earliest inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands were without a kayak 

 or boat of some kind is based upon researches in the shell-heaps of abandoned 

 village-sites on those islands ; but a kayak with a whale-bone or even a wooden 

 frame without its modern ornaments of ivory and bone, contained no material 

 that would withstand decay arid final absorption. The skin-covering, when worn 

 out and unfit for use as such, was, no doubt, then as now, cut up into straps and 

 patches, or served as food in time of famine, while the frame could be utilized 



* Dall : On Succession, etc.; p. 75. 



f I refer to Figs. 224, 225, 233, 234, 235, 238, 243, 244, and 245, representing bone dart-heads from the fish- 

 bone and mammalian layers. 



