188 aEOWTH AND DECLINE OP CULTURE. 



On tlie other hand^ it is much, easier to go on pointing out arts 

 practised by the less civilized races, which seem to have their 

 fitting place rather in a history of progress than of degenera- 

 tion. This remark applies to the case just mentioned, of the 

 intermediate forms between the boomerang and the war-club 

 being found in Australia, as though to mark the stages through 

 which the perfect instrument had been developed. Several 

 such cases occur among the arts of fire-making and cooking 

 described in the following chapters. To glance for a moment 

 at the history of Textile Fabrics (into which I hope to go more 

 fully at a future time), it may be noticed that the spindle for 

 twisting thread has been found in use in Asia, Africa, and North 

 and South America, among people whose ruder neighbours had 

 no better means of making their finest thread or cord than by 

 twisting it with the hand, by rolling the fibres with the palm, 

 on the thigh or some other part of the body. Again, though 

 every known tribe appears to twist cord, and to make matting 

 or wicker-work, the combination of these two arts, weaving, 

 which consists in matting twisted threads, is very far from 

 being general among the lower races. The step seems from our 

 point of view a very simple one, but a large proportion of man- 

 kind had never made it. Now there is a curious art, which is 

 neither matting nor weaving, found among tribes to whom real 

 weaving was unknown. It consists in laying bundles of fibres, 

 not twisted into real cord, side by side, and tying or fastening 

 them together with transverse cords or bands ; varieties of 

 fabrics made in this way are well known in New Zealand and 

 among the Indians of North-Western America ; and Mr. Henry 

 Christy pointed out to me a sack-like basket made in this 

 way, which he found in use in 1856 among an Indian tribe 

 N.W. of Lake Huron, a very good example of this interesting 

 transition-work. Nor do we look in vain for such a fabric in 

 Europe; it is found in the Lake Habitations of Switzerland. M. 

 Troyon's work shows a specimen from Wangen, which belongs 

 to the Stone Age.^ Mr. John Evans has three specimens of 

 fabrics from the Swiss Lakes, which form a series of great in- 



' Troyon, ' Habitations Lacustres ;' Lausanne, 1860, pi. vii. fig. 24, pp. 43, 429, 

 465. 



