426 Revieics — Report on the U.S. National Museum. 



many lives, and so stopped the labours of the workmen, which 

 were thenceforth never resumed. Perhaps, too, the same calamity 

 overthrew, by an earthquake, many of the idols (of which not 

 one is now standing on its pedestal), laid waste the island, and 

 wrought the destruction of the trees which once adorned it, and 

 from the period of that disaster probably dates the decadence of the 

 ancient people of Tepito Te Henua. The island contains several 

 distinct craters, the highest point being 1,970 feet. The great 

 crater of Kana Kao has a lake in its centre 300 feet in depth, 

 with a circumference at its surface of 2| miles, so that good 

 drinking water sufBcient for a large population exists on the island. 



(E) Mr. Otis Tufton Mason describes the man's knife among 

 the North American Indians as illustrated by the collections in the 

 U.S. National Museum. Knives, strictly speaking, are adapted for 

 industrial purposes, and therefore belong to the category of tools, not 

 weapons. If, however, a knife is used as a weapon for destruction, 

 it should be classed as a dagger, but when employed as an 

 edged tool it is properly described as a knife. The edge tool 

 works by pressure, by friction, or by a blow. One used by 

 means of a blow is an axe if the edge is in a line with the handle, 

 and an adze if it lies across the handle ; an edged tool working by 

 friction is a scraper, but one working by pressure is a knife. 

 Although the iron or steel-bladed knife has been only in the hands 

 of Eskimo, of Canadians, and tribes of the United States and the 

 North Pacific, for a century or two they seem to have thoroughly 

 mastered its use as a tool. They are nearly all curved-bladed, and 

 the hafting is always native, the blade alone (whether of steel or 

 iron) being foreign. Before the possession of iron there is meagre 

 evidence that any of these native races possessed other than the most 

 trivial carvings in hard material. Their best works were in soft 

 wood and slate, by means of the beaver's tooth or shark's tooth 

 knives. Mr. Mason does not mention the use of flint or obsidian, 

 but one knife with a glass blade from Patagonia is recorded. 



(G) "Arrow-points, Spear-heads, and Knives of Prehistoric 

 Times," by Dr. Thomas Wilson, Curator of Prehistoric Archaeology, 

 U.S. National Museum. Dr. Wilson's memoir is one of the most 

 elaborate in this volume and covers 177 pages. It describes and 

 illustrates spears and harpoons in the Paleolithic period ; the origin 

 of the bow and arrow ; superstitions concerning arrow-points and 

 stone implements. In the island of Guernsey the stone implements 

 are called 'lightning-stones' and 'thunder-stones' (pierre defoudre or 

 pierre de tonnerre), and are firmly believed in as a protection against 

 fire. ^ The flint mines and quarries in Europe and America are 

 described ; a most interesting account is given (illustrated by many 

 plates) of the materials used in making arrow-points and spear- 

 heads, showing the microscopic structure of the materials. The 

 manufacture of arrow-points and spear-heads is explained, and 

 the various scrapers, grinders, and straighteners used in making 

 arrow and spear shafts. All the varied patterns of arrow-heads 

 and spear-heads are arranged, classified, and elaborately figured, 



