504 Transactions. — Miscelkmeous. 



instances in Mr. White's collection small tools, apparently 

 drills, present the exceptional feature of four facets meeting at 

 a point, like some of the bits used by carpenters. We know 

 from various sources that greenstone drills were used for 

 drilling the holes by means of which the top- sides were lashed 

 on to the great war-canoes. 



Mr. White has some very special objects, such as a pendant, 

 needle, or shawl-pin, as thin as a penholder and 7in. long ; 

 several fish-hook points, which of course would also serve for 

 eardrops ; and a pecuhar chisel with a basin-like depression 

 near the edge to accommodate the thumb and finger while the 

 haft end rested on the palm of the hand. Shawl-pins, used for 

 fixing the flax mat formerly the sole garment of the Maori, 

 were more commonly made of bone, but there are several in 

 local collections of this stone. A very curious object in Mr, 

 White's collection is a small fish-shaped spinning-bait or 

 minnow. 



Cook, in his first voyage, gives an account of the tools used 

 by the Maoris : " They have adzes, axes, and chisels, which 

 serve them also as augers for the boring of holes. As they 

 have no metal, their adzes and axes are made of a hard black 

 stone, or of a green talc which is not only hard but tough, and 

 their chisels of human bone or small fragments of jasper, which 

 they chip off from a block in sharp an-gular pieces like gun-flints. 

 Their axes they value above all that they possess, and never 

 would part with one of them for anything that we could give. 

 I once offered one of the best axes t had in the ship, besides a 

 number of other things, for one of them, but the owner would 

 not sell it ; from which I conclude that good ones are scarce 

 among them. Their small tools of jasper, which are used in 

 finishing their nicest work, they use till they are blunt, and 

 then, as they have no means of sharpening them, throw them 

 away. We have given the people at Tologa a piece of glass, 

 and in a short time they found means to drill a hole through 

 it, in order to hang it round the neck as an ornament by a 

 thread ; and we imagine the tool must have been a piece of 

 this jasper. How they bring their large tools first to an edge, 

 and sharpen the weapon which they call patoo-jjatoo, we could 

 not certainly learn, but probably it is by bruising the same 

 substance to powder and with this grinding two pieces against 

 each other." What he here refers to as jasper is mosit pro- 

 bably obsidian, or volcanic glass, which is plentiful in the North 

 Island, and splinters of which, such as he describes, are found 

 in Maori camps throughout New Zealand. 



Polack speaks of the implements in similar terms; but 

 they were out of date in his time — i.e., in 1832. He says, 

 " Much patience was required to put an edge on the mere, 

 which was often managed by pounding the talc to powder, 



