If these authoritative statements be accurate, can we not hazard a shrewd conjecture from examination of the implements and of the methods prevalent amongst the backward or uncivilised tribes closely resembling our Cave Dwellers, as to which was probably the first implement or method employed for catching fish? Can we, in fact, from the data available from the Eskimos, Tasmanians, and other similar races so reconstruct our men of Dordogne and elsewhere as to adjudge approximately whether first in their hands at any rate was the Spear, the Hook, or the Net? Such a quest seems one of the incidental motives of G. de Mortillet in _Les Origines de la Chasse et de la Pêche_, 1890, which modifies in several particulars his earlier _Les Origines de la Pêche et de la Navigation_, 1867. We find from his pages and those of Rau’s _Prehistoric Fishing_ (1884), and of Parkyn’s _Prehistoric Art_ (1916), that a comparative examination of the above races, as it ramifies, discloses not only a close resemblance to Palæolithic Man in the material, nature, and fashioning of their tackle, but also in their art and method of expressing their art. Such similarity of art, evident in the Eskimos, stands revealed by the Bushmen of Africa (especially in the caves formerly used for habitations by the tribes of the Madobo range) in no less obvious or striking degree. “The nearest parallels to the finer class of rock carvings in the Dordogne are in fact to be found among the more ancient specimens of similar work in South Africa, while the rock paintings of Spain find their best analogies among the Bushmen.”[19] The Africans, it is true, perfected their engravings on the surface of the rocks more frequently by “pecking.” But both they and Palæolithic man make free and successful use of colours, of which the African possesses six as against the three or four of his European brethren. Each race depicts fish and animals so life-like as to be easily identifiable. What evidence as to priority do the Eskimo methods of to-day yield us? Cartailhac but echoes Rau, Salomon Reinach, and Hoffmann[20] in his assertion that the prehistoric Reindeer Age compares practically with the actual age of the Eskimos. Their fishing spears in material, shape, and barb resemble the Palæolithic. Their carvings and engravings of fishing and whaling scenes on bone and ivory show clear kinship to the Dordognese.