GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CULTURE. 175 



when our worthy ancestors were wont to take liot food in their 

 practised fingers." ^ But whether the use of the fork in eating 

 came about in Fiji as a consequence of the common use of 

 stewed food, or from some more occult cause, it seems proba- 

 ble that their use of it and ours may spring from two inde- 

 IDcndent inventions. That they got the art of pottery from 

 Asia is indeed hkely enough, but there seems very little ground 

 for thinking that the eating-fork came to them from Asia, or 

 from anywhere else. 



If an art can be found existing in one limited district of the 

 world, and nowhere else, there seems to be ground for assum- 

 ing that it was invented by the people among whom it is found, 

 with much greater confidence than if it appears in several 

 distant places. Any one, however, who thinks this an unfair 

 inference, may console himself with the knowledge that Ethno- 

 logists seldom get a chance of using it at present, except for 

 very trifling arts or for unimportant modifications. Indeed, 

 any one who claims a particular place as the source of even the 

 smallest art, from the mere fact of finding it there, must feel 

 that he may be using his own ignorance as evidence, as though 

 it were knowledge. It is certainly playing against the bank, 

 for a student to set up a claim to isolation for any art or cus- 

 tom, not knowing what evidence there may be against him, 

 buried in the ground, hidden among remote tribes, or contained 

 even in ordinary books, to say nothing of the thousands of 

 volumes of forgotten histories and travels. 



Among the inventions which it seems possible to trace to 

 their original districts, is the hammock, which is found, as it 

 were, native in a great part of South America, and the West 

 Indies, and is known to have spread thence far and wide over 

 the world, carrying with it its Haitian name, Jtamac. 



The boomerang is a peculiar weapon, and moreover there 

 are found beside it in its country, Australia, intermediate forms 

 between it and the battle-axe or pick ; so that there is ground 

 for considering it a native invention developed through such 

 stages into its most perfect form. Various Old World missiles 

 have indeed been claimed as boomerangs ; a curved weapon 



' Williams, vol. i. p. 138. 



