f folkways. They are not free
from the admixture of superstition and vanity, but the element of
expediency predominates in them. It is reported of the natives of New
South Wales that a man will lie on a rock with a piece of fish in his
hand, feigning sleep. A hawk or crow darts at the fish, but is caught by
the man. It is also reported of Australians that a man swims under
water, breathing through a reed, approaches ducks, pulls one under water
by the legs, wrings its neck, and so secures a number of them.[165] If
these stories can be accepted with confidence, they may well furnish us
a starting point for a study of the art of catching animals. The man
really has no tool, but must rely entirely on his own quickness and
dexterity. Birdlime is a device for which many plants furnish
material,[166] and which is available even against large game, which is
fretted and worn out by it until it becomes the prey of man. A Botocudo
hunter grates the eggs of an alligator together, when he finds them on
the bank, and so entices the mother.[167] The Yuroks of California
sprinkled berries on the shallow bottom of a river and stretched a net a
few inches below the surface of the water. Ducks diving for the berries
were caught by the neck in the meshes and drowned. As they hung quiet
they did not frighten away others.[168] The Tarahumari catch birds by
stringing corn kernels on a fiber which is buried underground. The bird
swallows the corn and cannot eject it.[169] Various animals were trained
to help man in the food quest and were thus drawn into the industrial
organization. The animals furnished materials (skin, bone, teeth, hair,
horns) and also tools, so that the food quest broadened beyond the
immediate supply of food into mechanical industrial forms. The Shingu
Indians, although they lived on the product of the ground, were obliged
to continue the chase because of the materials and implements which they
got from the animals. They used the jaw of a fish, with the teeth in it,
as a knife; the arm and leg bones of apes as arrow points; the tail
spike of a skate for the same; the two front claws of the armadillo to
dig the ground (a process which the animal taught them by the same use
of his claws); the shell of a river mussel as a scraper to finish wooden
tools. "These people were hunters without dogs, fishers without hooks,
and tillers without plow or spade. They show how much development life
was capable of in the time before metals