te each of which, below, they build a platform. The fish
jump at the opening, but some miss it and fall on the platform where
they are caught.[179] The Polynesians depend largely on fish for their
food supply. They had nets a thousand ells long, which could be handled
only by a hundred men. They made hooks of shell, bone, and hard
wood.[180] The first fishhooks of prehistoric men in Europe and North
America were made of pieces of bone pointed at both ends, the cord being
attached in the middle.[181] The Shingu Indians fished with bow and
arrow, nets, scoop baskets, and weirs. Bait was used to make the fish
rise. Then they were shot with an arrow. The people had no hooks, but
eagerly adopted them when they became acquainted with them.[182] They
and other Brazilians set a long cylindrical basket in a stream in such a
way that when the fish enters it and seizes the bait, it tilts up into a
perpendicular position. The fish cannot then get out.[183]

+124. Methods of fishing.+ Nilsson remarks on the astonishing
resemblance between all the fishing apparatus of Scandinavians, Eskimo,
and North Americans.[184] The problem is solved in the same way, but the
materials within reach impose limiting conditions. The rod and hook
yield to the net when the fish are plentiful. Then, however, the spear
also is used. It is sometimes made so that the head will come off when
the fish is struck. By its buoyancy the spearhead, sticking in the body
of the fish, compels it to rise, when it is caught.[185] A peculiar
device is reported from Dobu, New Guinea. A string long enough to reach
to the ground is fastened to a kite. At the end of the string is a
tassel of spider's web. The kite is held at such a height that the
tassel just skims the water. The fish catching at it entangles its teeth
in the spider's-web tassel and is caught.[186] The Chinese have trained
cormorants to do their fishing for them.

+125. The mystic element.+ Although the food quest is the most
utilitarian and matter-of-fact branch of the struggle for existence, the
mystic element does not fail to present itself. No doubt it would be
found interwoven with many of the cases mentioned above, if the question
was raised and the investigation made. In the Caroline archipelago
fishing is combined with various rites and religious notions. The chief
medicine man owes the authority of his position, not to his knowledge of
the art of fishing, but to his knowledge of the formulae of inc