such as Fig. 263, than ordinary flint flakes. An iron blade, hafted in a closely analogous manner by the Eskimos, is engraved by Nilsson.[1]
As already mentioned, some of the Australian savages about King George's Sound make knives or saws on a somewhat similar plan; but instead of one long flake they attach a number of small flakes in a row in a matrix of hard resin at one end of a stick. Spears are formed in the same manner.
In other cases, however, flakes are differently hafted. One such is shown in Fig. 198, from an original in the Christy Collection. One edge of this flake has been entirely removed by chipping so as to form a thick, somewhat rounded back, not unlike that of an ordinary knife-blade, though rather thicker in proportion to the width of the blade. The butt-end has then had a portion of the hairy skin of some animal bound over it with a cord, so as to give it a sort of haft, and effectually protect the hand that held it. The material of the flake appears to be horn-stone. Another knife of the same character, from Queensland, is in the Museum of the Hartley Institution at Southampton.
Fig. 198.—Australia. 12
Another example, from the Murray River,[2] but without the skin handle, has been figured.
A friend in Queensland tried to procure one of these knives for me, but what he obtained was a flake of glass made from a gin bottle, and the wrapping was of calico instead of kangaroo-skin. Iron blades[3] are sometimes hafted in the same way with a piece of skin. Some Australian jasper or flint knives,[4] from Carandotta, are hafted with gum, and provided with sheaths made of sedge. These gum-hafted knives are in use on the Herbert River[5] for certain surgical operations.
Some surface-chipped obsidian knives from California are hafted by having a strip of otter skin wound round them, and Prof. Flinders Petrie[6] has found an Egyptian flint knife hafted with fibre lashed round with a cord.
Occasionally flakes of quartz or other silicious stone were mounted at the end of short handles by the Australians, so as to form a kind of dagger or chisel. One such has been engraved by the Rev. J. G.
