ave-men made good enough weapons to be thrown with a sure aim.

And so the Cave-men learned new ways of making and using spears.
Perhaps they did not want to do it. But they had to do it or die. So
you see why the men and boys spent most of their time in learning to
follow the chase. Even the women and girls learned to hunt and to
make all sorts of weapons.

Long before Scarface lived the Cave-men began to make lighter spears.
The straighter they made the shaft, the easier it was to hit the mark.
And so the Cave-men began to vie with one another in making the
straightest and smoothest shafts.

[Illustration: _A stone scraper._]

When they cut the sticks for the shafts the Cave-men made gifts to the
wood-gods, and asked for the straightest and toughest branches that
grew on the trees. Then they cut the branches carefully and carried
them home to the cave. There they peeled them from butt to tip and
smoothed them with stone scrapers. Sometimes they rubbed them with fat
and laid them away to dry. It was hard work to make a crooked stick
straight. But the Cave-men tried many ways and at last they learned to
make as beautiful shafts as ever have been made.

When the Cave-men pulled the shaft back and forth on the sandstone,
they made deep grooves in it. We have found pieces of grooved
sandstone that the later Cave-men used. Sometimes they would clamp a
crooked stick between a grooved piece of sandstone and a flat bone.
Then they would pull and twist, and pull and twist, and pull and twist
that stick back and forth until the crooked place was made straight.

[Illustration: _A shaft-straightener._]

When Scarface was very old he made a shaft-straightener of a piece of
reindeer horn. He carved the head of the reindeer upon it, and made a
hole for the shaft. Then he thrust the crooked stick through the hole
and turned the shaft-straightener round and round as we turn a wrench,
until he straightened the shaft.

#THINGS TO DO#

_See if you can find a good branch for a shaft. If you have a right
to cut the branch, see if you can make it into a shaft._

_Find a stone which you can use for a scraper. What else can you use
as a scraper?_

_If you do not care to make a shaft, make something else out of the
stick which you straighten._

_Name the things which you have at home or at school made of wood._

_Make a collection of the different kinds of wood which you know._

_Which of t