56 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
of the screw was unknown and may be considered a true 
product of modern invention, for in Archaelogical discussion 
Archimedes has not as yet been relegated to the “bone yard.” 
M. de Mortillet’s last class included implements for grasping 
and joining. He divides this into two sub-groups, (a) in- 
cluding such articles as tongs, pincers, vices, clamps, and 
wedges, and (b) nails, lashings and glues. 
Logically his second group should come first, for glues and 
lashings are known to savagery long before pincers and 
clamps. _ 
From the most primitive culture, in fact wherever imple- 
ments of stone are used, they are set into handles, and use is 
made of glue to hold them there. The Australian “black-boy”’ 
holds the stone point in the javelin, and modern Indians im- ~ 
bed a part of the blade of their flint daggers in pitch to pro- 
vide a handle. 
Nails are not new. Their forerunner—pins—are found in 
the upper Paleolithic made of bone. The Mormons used wood- 
en pegs to hold together the timbers of their tabernacle at 
Salt Lake just as timbers are joined in China today. The 
buildings of the primitive peoples have long ago been de- 
stroyed, but it is not logically wrong to suppose they used 
such methods of joining as do peoples of comparable cultures 
who live today. 
The vice and pincers are recent devices. When the old stone 
age man split a stick to insert the javelin point and then bound 
the split stick below the point with green rawhide he was 
using the principle of the vice. The old fable of the bear 
whose head became fastened in a split log when he dislodged 
the wedge which held it apart in his eagerness for the honey 
it contained, suggests to us the possible manner in which the 
vice was invented. Later day types in the late bronze age are ~ 
included in collections of Roman tools. 
In the discussion of these types of implements a parallelism 
has been attempted between the modern savages and those 
old types whose cultures are comparable with those of pres- 
ent day types. On the whole, this parallelism is satisfactory, 
and the use of many an old tool has been explained by the 
observance of present-day savage people. 
