Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/135

Rh fish-hooks and harpoon-heads of bone and horn, fragments of nets, and certain perforated stone disks, which may have served as line or net sinkers. Similar implements have been found at other places in Europe. Fish hooks of bronze also have been found on the sites of the lake-villages. Dr. Hau gives figures of about thirty bronze hooks. They vary much in form and size; a part only are barbed, but nearly all are bent over at the top to form an eye for the attachment of the line.

The second part of the memoir treats of American aboriginal fishing, and is based on the materials contained in the archaeological division of the National Museum, of which division Dr. Rau has charge. Some of the hooks of aboriginal manufacture are similar in general form to ordinary modern fish-hooks, but only one regularly barbed specimen is known to the author. It was found in Madison County, New York, and is thought to have been made since 1600, and in imitation of the hooks brought to this country by Europeans. The hooks of bone and shell found in California are peculiar. The curved point approaches so closely to the shank that some persons have doubted their ever being used as fishing implements. It would probably be impossible to hook fish with hooks of this shape, but just such hooks have been brought from Pacific islands by travelers, who report that the natives are very successful with them in taking fish that bolt the hook instead of nibbling at it. No bait is used, as the hook itself looks somewhat like a worm. Twenty-eight dart-heads of bone and horn are here figured, most of which the author believes were armatures for fishing implements. Twenty of them have barbs on one side only, while the others are barbed on both sides. Several dart-heads of copper, each of which has a single barb, are in the collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. A large number of grooved, notched, or perforated stones have been found, which must have been used as sinkers for fish-lines and nets. Similar stones are used as sinkers by both Indian and white fishermen to-day. Two specimens of copper sinkers have come within the knowledge of the author. Stone carvings and pottery representing fishes have also been found in this country. The evidence that the American aborigines used mollusks as food is abundant; great heaps of oyster, clam, mussel, and other shells are found along our sea-coasts and river-banks. Intermingled with these shells are bones of various animals, implements, fragments of pottery, and vestiges of fireplaces. Dr. Rau appends to this memoir fifty-eight pages of extracts from various writings of the last four centuries, in which reference is made to aboriginal fishing in North America, and some notices of fishing implements and fish representations discovered south of Mexico. The text is illustrated by four hundred and five figures.

only from the simple to the complex, and from the concrete to the abstract, but from the immediate to the remote, lie the true directions of mental movement in the growth of knowledge and in rational study. To begin where there is much familiarity, some knowledge, and more or less curiosity and interest, and pass on to that which is remoter and deeper, is the true method. But, strange to say, the reverse method is that usually pursued. Instead of starting with the known and building upon it, the custom is to begin with the distant and unknown, and often, indeed, stay there so long that the knowledge acquired in many cases never becomes a reality at all. Geology, particularly, is liable to be pursued in this way, general ideas being accumulated from the books, with little application to facts within the limit of common experience. The present volume is an admirable exemplification of the true method of geological study. The author takes up the facts with which all Philadelphians are familiar, and in which they may be therefore assumed to have a certain degree of interest, and connects them in a very simple and instructive way with the great body of geological