Amidst the clash of opinion as to the exact use and method of use of these weapons, my conclusion, admittedly incapable of absolute proof, holds that the Palæolithic fisher owes to the hunter the inception of the chief weapon of his equipment, the Spear-Harpoon. Paul Broca’s dictum[68] that Man hunted before he fished seems, perhaps, despite Dall’s excavation of Eskimo _débris_,[69] to be borne out by Troglodyte records both positive and negative. The Gorge or bait-holder was employed by the hunter (according to some) even earlier than by the fisher. Gorges have been from time immemorial and still are in vogue in the Untersee for the capture of marine birds, as is the case to-day with the Eskimos of Norton Sound. From the chronicles of Rau, H. Philips, and others can be built a Table of Generations, or the story of how the Hunting Spear begat the Fishing Spear, which begat the Harpoon unilaterally barbed, which in turn begat the Harpoon bilaterally barbed, until about the tenth or twentieth generation—one is appalled at the amount of Succession Duty which such degrees of descent would now involve!—something begat the Rod. From this genealogical table I venture to dissent. I claim that the hunting Spear, Protean in possibilities, was either itself the Rod, or was, if “matre pulchra filia pulchrior” do not apply, at least the direct parent of the primitive Rod. In the bigger hunting of our own sorrowful day the same principle manifests itself, for the British soldier in France often angled with his line attached to his bayoneted rifle. Many writers have attempted, some like de Mortillet with typical French logic, some with none, to set down the sequential development of fishing. As the Censor has not as yet banned free expression of piscatorial opinions, I conclude this chapter with essaying a scheme of reconstruction of my own. _First_ came fishing with the hand, _la pêche à la main_, which, according to Abel Hovelacque, “_est le mode le plus élémentaire et certainement le moins productif_.”[70] This method we may surmise was first exercised on fish left half stranded in small pools by the action of tides or floods, or on fish spawning in the shallow redds.[71] As _la pêche à la main_ was the first to arrive, so was it the first to cease from the functions of parentage or of fission, for with “tickling,” described by Ælian as even in his day an ancient device, further evolution of this method practically ended.[72]