Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/88

 mason] ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ZOO TECH NY 69

Bahnson, G. W. Liiders, Adrien de Mortillet, John Murdoch, Zelia Nuttall, C. H. Read, Edward Seler, Hjalmar Stolpe, and Max Uhle.

SIXTH METHOD OF CAPTURE

The sixth method of taking animals is classed under the general name of traps. In the second, third, fourth, and fifth methods the animal succumbs to force. The prevailing thought in the mind of the captor is that of seizure and destruction without con- sulting the desires and idiosyncrasies of the animal ; but in the whole class of devices enumerated under the general term traps, the psychology of the victim is seriously considered, and the game is not killed or violently captured, but induced by various deceits of the hunter, who may be absent or concealed, to commit suicide or self-incarceration. In one place the bird comes un- suspiciously to its accustomed roosting-place and is held fast by a bird-lime or a snood encircling its feet.

The whole class of destructive weapons is imitated in the trapping devices ; animals are seized by the foot or by the head ; they are stunned by a blow ; they are seriously cut with a blade ; they are pierced in some vital part, or they are induced or driven into an enclosure from which they cannot escape.

Indeed, there is no great gulf fixed between the foregoing classes in which man, as an active agent, is present, and the trap ; some of the latter are operated partly by the victim and partly by the hunter concealed, as in the case of the fall trap used by boys for catching snowbirds. The little stick which supports the weight is fastened to a long string that is pulled by the concealed hunter when a sufficient number of birds have come in.

When the minutiae of the traps are considered, one might almost say that there is a different mechanism for each species of animal. The parts of a trap are, as in tools, the working part and the manual part (or that which takes the place of the human hand), together with such intervening devices as render these cooperative.

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