By far the most interesting examples of fishing implements of ancient date have been obtained from graves in California; these are well represented in the collections made by Schumacher and Bowers. A number of specimens may be seen in the National Museum; one sinker from this collection has already been described. Fish-hooks, however, constitute the great majority of the specimens, and many of them are of such unprecedented forms that they have been mistaken for ornaments. The marked peculiarity consists in the great width of the body of the hook, and the deeply involuted character of the barbless point, making it seem impossible that a fish should be impaled at all. It may be that this hook was intended only as a contrivance for securing bait, and that the fish, having swallowed this, was unable to disgorge it, and in this way was secured by the fisherman. In Plate XXVIII, three of these hooks are illustrated. The method of fastening them to the line is not well known, and the form does not suggest it, except in a few cases in which the shaft is enlarged slightly at the upper end. The head is never perforated, but is frequently pointed, and may have been inserted in a head of some other material and secured by means of asphaltum. The fact that portions of this material still adhere to the upper part of the shaft confirms this conjecture. None of these hooks are barbed. Similar hooks of bone, exhibited in the national collection, have barbs on the outside, near the point. Hooks resembling these are used by some tribes to secure the ends of strings of beads. Prof. F. W. Putnam has described a number of these hooks which belong to the Peabody Museum. The largest is two and three-fourths inches in length and one inch wide at the middle of the shank. These came from San Clemente, San Miguel, and Santa Cruz islands, and the mainland about Santa Barbara, and are accompanied by stone implements used in their manufacture.[46] The natives of Tahiti had fish-hooks made of mother-of-pearl, and every fisherman made them for himself. They generally served for the double purpose of hook and bait. "The shell is first cut into square pieces, by the edge of another shell, and wrought into a form corresponding with the outline of the hook by pieces of coral, which are sufficiently rough to perform the office of a file; a hole is then bored in the middle; the drill being no other than the first stone they pick up that has a sharp corner; this they fix into the end of a piece of bamboo and turn it between the hands like a chocolate mill; when the shell is perforated, and the hole sufficiently wide, a small file of coral is introduced, by the application of which the hook is in a short time completed, few costing the artificer more time than a quarter of an hour."[47]