[54] L’Anthropologie, tome xix. pp. 184-190, especially p. 187, where the author attempts une reconstitution hypothétique de la façon, dont cette interprétation admise, on pourrait conçevoir la fixation de ces “hameçons.” The inverted commas do not suggest confidence.
[55] If both the ends of the gorge were as much bent up as a hook, the tendency would be for the gorge, when its points got fast, to be rotated by the pull on the line and to assume, owing to greater curvature, a bent-back position, which would allow of its easy withdrawal and defeat the object—the capture of the fish. Some Santa Cruz gorges are of an angular type, but with the points turned somewhat down. The double hook of bronze or copper, e.g. of Ancient Peru, seems to support my suggestion of gorge evolution, although, fair to add, it was suspended from the centre.
[56] Sanchouniathon, as translated by Philo of Byblus, ap. Euseb., Praep. Ev. i. 10, 9, in what purports to be a Phœnician account, would bring the invention right down to the Iron Age. “Many generations later Agreus and Halieus sprang from the stock of Hypsouranios. They were the discoverers of hunting and fishing, hunters and fishers being called after them. From these in turn sprang two brothers, inventors of iron and iron-working. One of these brothers, Chrysor, practised spells and charms and oracles. He is Hephaistos, and he it is who invented hook and bait and line and boat, being the first of all men to set sail. Wherefore also they worshipped him as a god after his death, and named him Zeus Meilíchios.”
[57] E. Krause, op. cit., 208, holds that the most primitive hook was made of wood: bind a thorn or sprig crossways and your hook is to hand.
[58] H. T. Sheringham holds that both early and recent specimens of Fijian hooks bear out this view (Ency. Brit., ed. xi., s.v. “Angling”). “The progressive 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 invention: 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).
[59] See Man, Feb., 1915, “Note on the new kind of Fish-hook,” by Henry 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 derivation 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 Archæol. Jour., vol. 58, No. 230, pp. 199-213. See also J. G. Wood, Nature’s Teaching (London, 1877), pp. 115-6, on the point.
[60] See infra, p. 357.
[61] My own Mohave Rod is of ’ihora, the red willow of that district, barked and straightened by an ingenious Indian method. The line is of the prepared bast of ’ido, another species of willow, and the hook of barrel cactus thorn. Hooks made out of Echinocactus wislizeni are better adapted for fish which do not nibble at the bait, but bolt it hook and all; for this reason the Indians fasten the bait below the hook (E. Palmer, “Fish-hooks of the Mohave Indians,” American Naturalist, vol. xii. p. 403). On the north-west coast the Indians a generation ago invariably used spruce-wood for their halibut hooks (Rau, p. 139). Some Maori hooks are of human bone and pawa, with kiwi feathers.
[62] I do not think that these gold hooks were a unit of currency, as the lari of the Persian Gulf were, according to W. Ridgeway, The Origin of Metallic Currency, etc. (Cambridge), 1892, p. 276.