(6) Mr. Minchin’s explanation is ingenious, if open to two objections. “As to the ox horn puzzle,” he writes to me, “I feel no doubt that the Cherithai (as the Bible calls the Kretans) cut a ring out of the horn of an ox, and then cut a gap, thus making a crescent of horn, to the one end of which they attached their line, which is exactly what the black fellows (in Australia) do to-day with a pearl shell.”[176] But against this conjecture weighs the fact that as the grain of the horn runs from butt to point, if the hook be cut from cross-section it would probably break, as the cross-section would be across the grain, and so very frayable. If, however, the hook were cut from a panel removed from the side of the horn and just where the curve comes before the point, the substance of the hook might possibly stand. [Illustration: MR. MINCHIN’S EXPLANATION OF κέρας.] Anticipating and dissenting from Mr. Minchin’s explanation are Monro’s note on _Il._, XXIV. 80 ff., and Professor Tylor’s comment in the note. “The main difficulty in the ancient explanation of the passage is the prominence given to the κέρας, which is spoken of as if _it_ were the chief feature of the fisherman’s apparatus. The question naturally suggests whether the κέρας might not be _the hook itself_, made, like so many utensils of primitive times, from the horn of an animal.” On this point Mr. E. B. Tylor writes to Monro as follows: “Fish-hooks of _horn_ are in fact known in prehistoric Europe, but are scarce, and very clumsy. After looking into the matter, I am disposed to think that the Scholiast knew what he was about, and that the old Greeks really used a horn guard, where the modern pike fisher only has his line bound, to prevent the fish biting through. Such a horn guard, if used then, would last on in use, anglers being highly conservative, and I shall look out for it.” Maspero,[177] however, states, “Objects in bone and horn are still among the rarities of our museums: horn is perishable and is eagerly devoured by certain insects, which rapidly destroy it,” with which statement may be compared _Od._, XXI. 395, “lest the worms might have eaten the horns” (of the bow of Odysseus). Finally the explanation first suggested by Mr. C. E. Haskins[178] and adopted by Dr. Leaf, that κέρας was an artificial _bait_ of horn, appears to me as an angler and as having seen in the Pacific, but not used, “bait fish-hooks made of shell all in one piece, of a simple hooked form without any barb,”[179] to be perhaps the most likely solution of our problem.