PRIMEVAL DEXTERITY. 133 



while the base rested on the buckskin cushion iii the palm. The 

 point of the smaller deer-horn prong, not exceeding one-sixteenth of 

 an inch square, was brought to bear on the part of the side wliere 

 the notch should be ; a sawing motion made the chips fly to right 

 and left, and in less than a minute it was cut to the necessary depth. 

 The other side was then completed in like manner, and the arrow- 

 head was finished in about forty minutes. 



In the above narrative the use of the right hand in all the active 

 manipulations of the Indian arrow-maker is assumed; though probably 

 with no conscious purpose of emphasising what is the ordinary and 

 normal practice. But the details are in other respects full of interest 

 from the light we may assume them to throw on the method pursued 

 by the primitive implement makers of the earliest stone age. Dr. 

 Evans describes and figures a class of flint tools recovered from time 

 to time, the edges of which, blunted and worn at both ends, suggest 

 to his experienced eye their probable use for chipping out arrow- 

 heads and other small implements of flint, somewhat in the fashion 

 detailed above with the tool of deer's horn ; and which we may, 

 perhaps, presume were used before the discovery of the greater apti- 

 tude of horn or bone tools for the object in view. Some of the flint- 

 flakers are carefully wrought into the form best adapted for being held 

 in the hand of the workman. But whether fashioned by means of 

 flint or horn fabricator, the material to be operated upon has to be 

 held in one hand, while the tool is dexterously manipulated with the 

 other. Signor Craveri, whose long residence in Mexico gave him 

 very favourable opportunities for observing the process of the native 

 workers in obsidian, remarks that, when the Indians " wish to make 

 an arrow or other instrument of a splinter of obsidian, they take the 

 piece in the left hand, and hold grasped in the other a small goat's 

 horn. They set this piece of obsidian upon the horn, and dexter- 

 ously pressing it against the point of it, while they give the horn a 

 gentle movement from right to left, and up and down, they disengage 

 from it frequent chips ; and in this way obtain the desired form."* 

 Again, in an account communicated to Sir Charles Lyell by Mr.. 

 Cabot, of the mode of procedure of the Shasta Indian arrow-makers, 

 after describing the detachment of a piece from the obsidian pebble 

 with the help of an agate chisel, he thus proceeds : " Holding the^ 



* Translated from Gastaldi. See Evans' Stone Implements, p. 36. 



