FROM CALIFORNIA. 15 



Further on 1 the writer somewhat modifies his statement, that all were 

 used as clubheads, by suggesting that the stone disks may have been 

 employed to give added weight to the spears used in killing large game. 



It will be seen from the above quotations that while the employment 

 of perforated stones in Africa as weights to digging sticks is to be re- 

 garded as an established fact, the implements appearing to have been 

 seen frequently in actual use there, so much cannot be said in regard to 

 the supposed use as clubheads. No one appears to have seen them in 

 the hands of Bushmen or LTottentot warriors, nor apparently do any of 

 the mounted specimens which have been collected resemble what may 

 be termed the club type so closely as to make their classification as 

 such at all certain. It is not at all unlikely that their use in Africa as 

 digging stick weights may indeed be secondary, but of this there does 

 not appear at present to be sufficient proof. 



The fact as stated by Gooch that the Bushmen who have used them 

 recently, or even still use them, no louger make them, proves little or 

 nothing. Precisely the same statement holds good of the stone arrow- 

 heads of the Xorth American Indians. Until recently the Apaches, for 

 instance, used stone arrowheads, and even prized them above the iron 

 points, which latter they manufactured iu quantity; yet, so far as I could 

 learn from inquiry (in 1873), all the stone points in their possession had 

 been found on the surface of the grouud, and I could not ascertain that 

 any of the tribe attempted their manufacture, though doubtless there 

 were some of the older men who had not forgotten the art. It is one of 

 many cases which might be cited where the use of implements has sur- 

 vived after the manufacture has been abandoned or forgotten. Such 

 partial survivals may, perhaps, be regarded as the universal rule, not 

 only regarding implements, but also the various arts of life, as the lower 

 races abandon their own inventions and habits in favor of those of a 

 higher civilization. It would be idle, then, to argue from the fact that 

 since stone arrowpoints were in use after their manufacture had ceased 

 that they were originally employed for a different purpose, and that 

 their subsequent use as arrowpoints was only secondary, or that the 

 people using them at present must have inherited them from a preced- 

 ing and different race. 



A moment's reflection will show that the use of digging sticks must 

 have been universal among savage tribes. A pointed stick with which 

 to dig roots is iu truth an implement as natural to primitive man as is 

 a stone for breaking nuts, acorns, &c. It survives to-day, not only 

 among our own Indians and other barbarous tribes, but among the 

 peasantry of Europe, and even in the hands of the modern gardener. 

 It has been improved in several ways among different tribes, as by the 

 addition of the crossbar by the Chinook, the Zuni, and the New Zea- 

 landers, and the stone weight is simply one of these improvements 

 which has by no means been invented or used by all tribes. 



•Jour. Anthrop. Inst. Great Brit. A: Ireland, Vol. XI, p. 131, 1882. 



