Prehistoric Man often with a limited local supply was driven to adopt and adapt any material which could be forced into his purpose of a hook. To this cause has been ascribed one of the most extraordinary hooks on record. This relic, now in the Berlin Museum, of the lacustrine dwellers is formed out of the upper mandible of an eagle, notched down to the base. But the most interesting _natural_ fish-hook known to me (found in Goodenough Island, New Guinea) is the thick upper joint of the hind leg of an insect, _Eurycantha latro_, furnished, however, only by the male, who is endowed with the long, stout recurved spur, suitable for fishing. The leg joints and therefore the hooks got from them (about 1⅝ inches long) are supplied ready made by Nature: they merely require to be fastened to a tapered snood of twisted vegetable matter for immediate employment.[59] Where flints, shells, and horn were absent or, if present, were not turned to account, an abundance of thorns with bend and point ready made and with proved capacities of piercing and holding would attract the notice and serve the purpose of the New Stone Man. Such later on was the case in Babylon and Israel (in both of which countries the primary sense of the word equalling hook seems, according to some authorities, to have been thorn[60]), and is the case even now with our fishermen in Essex and the Mohave Indians in Arizona.[61] [Illustration: THE _Eurycantha latro_. HOOK READY MADE FROM THE SPUR OF _Eurycantha latro_. See n. 1, p. 34.] The suggestion that the choice of material was generally prompted by abundance or proximity of supply seems reasonable. But it must not be pushed as far as the assumption (of which a glance at the evidence as to material adduced by Joyce detects the absurdity) that, because gold was very abundant in Columbia and because gold fish-hooks have been unearthed in Cauca and elsewhere, the primitive angler of that country employed gold as the chief constituent of his hook![62] Nor, again, is it possible for me to dwell on the evolution or in some countries the possible _pari passu_ development of the single into the double hook (mentioned in England first in _The Experienc’d Angler_ of Venables, 1676), nor yet to trace the various stages by which the simple bone or tusk hook of Wangen or Moosseedorf blossomed out into the barbed metal hook of the Copper Age.[63] The Spear-Harpoon and some points of reindeer horn alone remain for consideration. Opinion is divided as to the nature and use of these points. Some pronounce them mere arrow heads.[64]