Conformably, the 60 Seri gathered near Costa Rica in 1894 made it their business to pick up or beg all sorts of industrial products and materials, yet apparently did not possess so many as a dozen knives in the entire band; and while protolithic implements, ollas, shell cups, paint-stones, etc., were seen in constant use, none of the men, women, or children were observed to use knives for cutting meat or for any other customary purpose. Among the supplies laid on top of the jacal shown in plate X, to keep them out of the way of the dogs, was a hind leg of a horse, from femur to hoof (some three days dead and still ripening); most of the larger muscles were already gnawed away, leaving loose ends of fiber and strings of tendon clinging to the bone, the condition being such that the remaining flesh might easily have been cut and scraped away by means of a knife; yet whenever a warrior or woman or youth hungered he or she took down the heavy joint, squatted or sat on the ground with back to one side of the doorway, held the mass at the height of the mouth, and gnawed, sucked, and swallowed, frequently tearing the tissue by twisting and backward jerks of the head, and not only masticating, but swallowing the free ends of tendons still attached to the bone. This process was varied only by seizing with the hands and tearing off a strip of flesh or skin already loosened by the teeth; and it was continued until the bones were practically clean, when they were wrenched apart by the stronger men in order that the cartilaginous cushions and epiphyses might be gnawed away. The only approach to cooking or carving was a parboiling of the foot, after the leg was wrenched off at the hock, until the hoof was sufficiently softened to be knocked off with the protolithic hupf[253] shown in plate XLIII, when half a dozen matrons and well-grown maidens gathered about to gnaw the gelatinous tissue (already softened by incipient decay as well as by the parboiling) investing the coffin-bone. The entire procedure in this as in many other cases proclaimed the absence of knife-sense. The Caucasian huntsman does not have to think of his knife when game is to be bled or skinned or dissected; his habit-trained hand knows where to find the implement, how to seize it, and in most cases how to wield it advantageously; but the Seri hand possesses no such cunning, and uses the knife only clumsily and at second thought, if at all. The Seri huntsman, on the other hand, does not have to think of nails and teeth, for they are trained and coordinated by hereditary habit to spontaneously act in unison and with the utmost possible or needful vigor; while the Caucasian at least has completely lost the claw-and-teeth instinct of offense and defense. [253] Defined postea, p. 188.