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Fig. 9.—Serrated or Multibarbed Weapons.

1. Sting of the common Bee; 2. Sting of Ray.

Fig. 10.—Weapons made of Sharks’ Teeth.

Fig. 11.—Italian Dagger, with Grooves and Holes for Poison.

Fig. 12.—Sword with Serrated Blade of Saw-fish.

Thus man, essentially a tool-making animal, and compelled by the conditions of his being to one long battle with the brute creation, was furnished by his enemies, not only with models of implements and instruments, and with instructions to use them, from witnessing the combats of brutes, but actually with their arms, which he converted to his own purposes. Hence the weapon and the tool were, as a rule, identical in the hands of primæval man; and this forms, perhaps, the chief test of a primitive invention. The earliest drift-flints ‘were probably used as weapons both of war and the chase, to grub roots, to cut down trees, and to scoop out canoes.’[41] The Watúsi of Eastern Africa make their baskets with their sharpened spear-heads; and the so-called Káfirs (Amazulu, &c.) still shave themselves with the assegai. Hence, too, as like conditions engender like results, the arms and implements of different races resemble one another so closely as to suggest a common origin and actual imitation, even where copying was, so to speak, impossible.