EVOLUTION OF TOOLS, ETC. 51 
old Hochelaga’ and knives of bamboo cane are used today by 
some Polynesian tribes.? Elsewhere bamboo is used in making 
handles for other implements. 
Many peoples make elaborate handles for rude knife blades, 
and the preservation of the blade alone, a crudely chipped 
piece of flint, would give a very low impression of the mechan- 
ical art of the people, although the handle by which it was 
attached may have been elaborately worked. 
The primitive shear was a flat flake of flint held in one 
hand and pressed against a flat stone held horizontally much 
as a saddler’s draw-knife or a cigar maker’s clip is used today. 
It may have been provided with a handle as the “ulu” or 
woman’s knife of the Eskimo.? 
The shear made of two movable blades passing over each 
other was found in ancient Egypt and in China, but was doubt- 
less invented after the “ulu’’type of shear had been in long use. 
The axe is a development of the stone knife. It would be 
very difficult to wield a knife as long as many axe-heads with- 
out the use of a handle. It was doubtless a red letter day in 
the history of invention when some Acheulean genius found 
that by wrapping vines about a sharp flake of flint and twist- 
ing the ends into a handle he had produced the first axe. 
Axes are in general use throughout Paleolithic times. The 
method of attachment to a handle varies greatly. In the 
Solutrean of South Africa! axes were found with slight longi- 
tudinal grooves chipped in such a manner as to be firmly held 
when inserted into a split stick. The head was often locked 
to the stick by means of green raw-hide which, contracting 
greatly in drying, binds the blade firmly to the handle. Many 
of the polished axe heads of Neolithic times are grooved to 
receive the split handle or lashings, as are many of the axes 
of the American Indians. 
Matlocks, adzes and chisels must be considered as adapta- 
tions of axes. A stone axe, while of little use in chopping a 
log across the grain, is of great use mounted as an adze in 
splitting it or ‘in hollowing it in the manufacture of a canoe. 
Likewise, the chisel is but an axe head set in a handle so that 
the blade is at the end of the handle, and a matlock a longer 
2. Dawson, F. W., Fossil Men and Their Modern Representatives. 1870. P. 135. 
3. Polynesian Researches, Vol. IV., P. 346. 
4. Mason, “The Ulu, or Woman’s Knife,” Rep. U. S. Nat. Mus. 1890. Pp. 411-416. 
