It has also been supposed that from their peculiar construction most of the triangular and concave-based arrow-heads of flint that are found in this country, and in Ireland, were constructed for a similar purpose (Fig. 95).
The serrated edges of weapons, like those of the bee and the sting-ray, when used as arrow-points, were likewise instrumental in retaining the poison and introducing it into the wound, and this form was copied with a similar object in some of the Florentine daggers above mentioned, a portion of the blade of one of which, taken from Meyrick’s _Ancient Arms and Armour_, is shown in Fig. 96.[119]
Although the use of poison would in these days be scouted by all civilized nations as an instrument of war, we find it still applied to useful purposes in the destruction of the larger animals. The operation of whaling, which is attended with so much danger and difficulty, has of late been greatly facilitated by the use of a mixture of strychnine and ‘woorali’, the well-known poison of the Indians of South America. An ounce of this mixture, attached to a small explosive shell fired from a carbine, has been found to destroy a whale in less than eighteen minutes, without risk to the whaler.[120]
When we consider how impotent a creature the aboriginal and uninstructed man must have been, when contending with the large and powerful animals with which he was surrounded, we cannot too much admire that provision of nature which appears to have directed his attention, during the very earliest stages of his existence, to the acquirement of the subtile art of poisoning. In the forests of Guiana there are tribes, such as the Otomacs, apparently weaponless, but which, by simply poisoning the thumb-nail with ‘curare’ or ‘woorali’, at once become formidable antagonists.[121] Poison is available for hunting as well as for warlike purposes: the South American Indians eat the monkeys killed by this means, merely cutting out the part struck,[122] and the wild tribes of the Malay peninsula do not even trouble themselves to cut out the part before eating.[123] The Bushmen, and the Stiens of Cambodia, use their poisoned weapons chiefly against wild beasts and elephants.
Thus we see that the most noxious of herbs and the most repulsive of reptiles have been the means ordained to instruct mankind in what, during the first ages of his existence, must have been the most useful of arts. We cannot now determine how far this agent may have been influential in exterminating those huge animals, the _Elephas primigenius_ and _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_, with the remains of which the earliest races of man have been so frequently associated, and which, in those primaeval days, before he began to turn his hand to the destruction of his own species, must have constituted his most formidable enemies.