34 INTRODUCTION 
Prehistoric Man often with a limited local supply was 
driven to adopt and adapt any material which could be forced 
into his purpose of a hook. To this cause has been ascribed 
one of the most extraordinary hooks on record. This relic, now 
in the Berlin Museum, of the lacustrine dwellers is formed out 
of the upper mandible of an eagle, notched down to the base. 
But the mostinteresting natural fish-hook known to me (found 
in Goodenough Island, New Guinea) is the thick upper joint 
of the hind leg of an insect, Eurycantha latro, furnished, however, 
only by the male, who is endowed with the long, stout recurved 
spur, suitable for fishing, The leg joints and therefore the 
hooks got from them (about 18 inches long) are supplied 
ready made by Nature: they merely require to be fastened to 
a tapered snood of twisted vegetable matter for immediate 
employment.! 
Where flints, shells, and horn were absent or, if present, 
were not turned to account, an abundance of thorns with bend 
and point ready made and with proved capacities of piercing 
and holding would attract the notice and serve the purpose of 
the New Stone Man. Such later on was the case in Babylon 
and Israel (in both of which countries the primary sense of 
the word equalling hook seems, according to some authorities, 
hooks bear out this view (Ency. Brit., ed. xi., s.v. “ Angling "’). ‘‘ The pro- 
gressive order of hooks used by the Indians or their predecessors in title in 
North America was, after the simple device of attaching the bait to the end 
of a fibrous line, (1) a gorge, a spike of wood or bone, sharpened at both ends 
and fastened at its middle to a line; (2) a spike set obliquely in the end of a 
pliant shaft ; (3) a plain hook; (4) a barbed hook ; (5) a barbed hook combined 
with sinker and lure. This series does not exactly represent stages of inven- 
tion: the evolution may have been affected by the habits of the different 
species of fish or their increasing wariness. The above progressive order 
applies, I believe, on the whole all over the world, if due allowance be made 
for varying conditions” (Smithsonian Handbook of American Indians 
(Washington), p. 460). , 
1 See Man, Feb., 1915, ‘‘ Note on the new kind of Fish-hook,” by He 
Balfour. The illustration is reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. H. 
Balfour and the Royal Anthropological Institute. 
Another notable hook is one of wood about four inches long with a claw 
(said to be that of a bird) attached, which Vancouver collected on his voyage 
in N.W. American waters (see Ethnographical Coll. at Brit. Mus.), “The 
whalebone in this must not be mistaken for anything else but a snood. For 
the ingenious derivatior of certain hooks in some South Sea Islands from their 
similarity to the bones of common fish, e.g. Cod and Haddock, see T. McKenny 
Hughes, in Archaeol. Jour., vol. 58, No. 230, pp. 199-213. See also J. G. 
Wood, Nature's Teaching (London, 1877), pp. 115-6, on the point. 
