288 



STRAY NOTES ON PAPUAN ETHNOLOGY. 



Part II. (Continued from Vol. x. (2), p. 617) 



By C. Hbdley, F.L.S., Conchologist to the Australian 



Museum. 



(Plates xiv.-xv.) 



III. A Palu Hook. 



In a recent article on the Ethnology of Funafuti,"' I have had 

 occasion to review in detail from the Ellice, and in general from 

 the Pacific, a gigantic wooden fish hook, commonly miscalled a 

 shark hook. 



The fish in whose captui*e it is employed is possibly a species 

 unknown to naturalists, for the only description of it with which 

 I am acquainted is an account, couched in popular language, by 

 Mr. Louis Becke,t the well known writer of South Sea tales. 

 This description suggests to my colleague Mr. E. R. Waite that 

 it may be one of the family Macruridse; it certainly is no shark. 



The " Palu," as it is called in the Ellice, is a fish six feet in 

 length and a hundred and fifty pounds in weight, shaped like 

 an Australian Jewfish, with a tough black skin covered with 

 large silvery curled scales, with lai'ge eyes and toothless (?) jaws. 

 It lives on the sea floor at depths of from 80 to 100 fathoms. 



On Nanomana palu fishing is conducted with superstition and 

 ceremony. Strict silence is enjoined when fishing, the take is 

 restricted to two by each canoe, and these are equally divided 

 among everybody, a relic possibly of earlier communism. 



* Memoirs of the Australian Museum, ill. 1897, The Atoll of Fuaafuti, 

 p. 272, figs. 39, 40. 



t Mem. Aus. Mus. op. cit. p. 199. 



