Their arrow-shafts are first suitably shaped, and then polished between pieces of pumice stone. This stone was also used in fashioning and polishing their bows, spear-shafts and war clubs. Pumice stone is found in abundance in the volcanic regions of California and Oregon, and east of the Sierra Nevada. The quality of the best observed by me, was much finer and lighter than that seen in the shops as an article of commerce. The arrow heads are secured to the shaft by threads of sinew, and a species of cement used for that and other purposes. The arrow-heads made and in most common use by the California Indians, as well as by many other tribes in the mountain ranges of the West and Southwest, are of the same shape and general appearance, and of similar material, with the exception of obsidian and old junk bottles, as the arrow heads found in all parts of the United States. They have been generally supposed to have been made and used by the pre-historic races that once inhabited this continent. The bow and arrows were in common use by the aborigines when America was first discovered, and their use has been continued to the present time among the tribes whose limited territories were not to any extent intruded upon by the whites. The Indians of California, unlike those of Southern Mexico and South America, who use the woorara (strychnos toxifera), poison their arrow-heads with the poison of the rattlesnake. Some animal’s liver is saturated with the poison and left until it reaches a state of thorough decomposition, when the barbs are plunged into the festering mass, withdrawn and dried. The gelatinous condition of the liver causes the poison to adhere to the stone, and the strength of the poison is thus preserved for some days. Only those arrow-heads that are inserted into a socket, and held in place by cement, are thus poisoned. These are easily detached after striking an object (the concussion shattering the cement, and the play of the shaft loosening the barb), and are left to rankle in the wound. According to Russio, however, this practice is now seldom resorted to, except in revenge for some great or fancied injury, or by the more malignant of a tribe, Indian policy seeming to discountenance a former custom. The introduction of fire arms among them, has been from the frontiers of civilization. The “_flint_,” or more properly cherty rock, when first quarried, is brittle and readily split and broken into the desired shapes required, even with the rude implements used by the Indians; though it is not probable that any but themselves could use them, as considerable skill seems to be required. The tool commonly used in the manufacture of arrow-heads, is a species of hammer or pick, made by fastening the sharp prong of a deer’s horn to a long stick.