[Footnote N356: It is twisted into “a compact helical mass like a watch-spring” in the Hudson Bay region. Schwatka, “Nimrod in the North,” p. 133. See also Klutschak, “Als Eskimo,” pp. 194, 195.] [Illustration: FIG. 258.--Whalebone wolf-killers. 1/4] We collected four sets of these contrivances, one set containing seven rods and the others four each. Fig. 258_a_ gives a good idea of the shape of one of these. It belongs to a set of seven, No. 89538 [1229], Fig. 258_b_, from Utkiavwĭñ, which are old and show the marks of having been doubled up. It is 12½ inches long, 0.4 broad, and 0.2 thick. The little notches on the opposite edges of each end were probably to hold a lashing of sinew which kept the folded rod in shape while the blubber was freezing, being cut by thrusting a knife through the partially frozen blubber, as is stated by Schwatka.[N357] Two of the sets are new, but made like the others. [Footnote N357: “Nimrod in the North,” p. 133.] [Footnote N358: See Gilder, Schwatka’s Search, p. 225; see also, Klutschak, “Als Eskimo,” etc., pp. 194-5, where the whalebones are said to have little knives on the ends.] This contrivance is also used by the Eskimo of Hudson Bay[N358] and at Norton Sound, where, according to Petroff,[N359] the rods are 2 feet long and wrapped in seal blubber. The name ĭsĭ´bru appears to be the same as the Greenlandic (isavssok), found only in the diminutive isavssoraĸ, a provincial name for the somewhat similar sharp-pointed stick baited with blubber and used for catching gulls. The diminutive form of this word in Greenlandic may indicate that their ancestors once used the large wolf-killer, when they lived where wolves were found. The definition of uju´kuaĸ, the ordinary word for the gull-catcher (see below)--in the Grønlandske Ordbog--is the only evidence we have of the use of this contrivance in Greenland. This is one of the several cases in which we only learn of the occurrence of customs, etc., noted at Point Barrow, in Greenland, by finding the name of the thing in question defined in the dictionary. [Footnote N359: Report, etc., p. 127.]