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Rh in the county of Tyrone. What may be the haft of a stone hatchet was found in another Irish crannog. Another is in the collection of General Pitt Rivers, F.R.S. Some of the hatchets from the Swiss Lake-dwellings were hafted in a similar manner. In one such haft, formed of ash, from Robenhausen, the blade is inclined towards the hand; in another, also of ash, the blade is at right angles to the shaft. Some of these club-like hafts resemble in character those in use for iron blades in Southern and Central Africa. The copper or bronze axes of the Mexicans were hafted in the same manner.

A method of hafting, which implies fixity of residence, is said to have been in use among the Caribs of Guadaloupe. The blade of the axe had a groove round it at the butt-end, and a deep hole having been cut in the branch of a growing tree, this end of the blade was placed in it, and as the branch grew became firmly embedded in it, the wood which grasped it having formed a collar that filled the groove. The Hurons are said to have adopted the same plan.

I have engraved in Fig. 94, an extremely rude example of hafting by fitting the blade into a socket, from an original kindly lent

Fig. 94.—Axe from the Rio Frio.

me by the late Mr. Thomas Belt, F.G.S., who procured it among the Indians of the Rio Frio, a tributary of the San Juan del Norte in Nicaragua. The blade is of trachyte entirely unground and most rudely chipped. The club-like haft is formed of some endogenous wood, and has evidently been chopped into shape by means of stone tools.

In these instances Clavigero's remark with regard to the copper