BY C. HEDLEY. 615 



was adorned by a pattern usual in that locality/white zigzag lines 

 on a black ground divided the space into panels filled by a white 

 scroll on a red ground, such as Haddon regards as degenerate and 

 conjoined birds' head. Each panel may possibly typify a croco- 

 dilian scute, and certain forwardly directed loops which terminate 

 the carving may even stand for hind limbs in a state of extreme 

 degeneration and reduplication. 



II. The Palm Leaf Creel. 

 (Plate LViiL, fig. 2.) 



From its perishable nature this useful domestic utensil is 

 unlikely to have reached a niche in the Ethnological Collection 

 of any Museum. The only mention I have noticed of it in 

 literature is by Lieut. Boyle T. Somerville, who, writing on the 

 New Hebrides, observes'-^ :— " The coconut palm leaf is very 

 ingeniously woven in all the islands by plaiting together the long- 

 tongues of the frond, beginning at the rib and joining the tips. 

 A mouth is made by splitting the rib down the middle, and thus 

 a very capacious basket, with a mouth fitting as tightly as a purse, 

 is quickly made. Pigs, yams, &c., for sale are usually carried in 

 them." As I have seen no published illustration of this basket, 

 this opportunity is embraced of submitting a sketch made in 

 July, 1890, in a native hut in the village of Mita on the north 

 shore of Milne Bay, British New Guinea. Here they were called 

 Porha, and were the exclusive property of the women, who easily 

 manufactured them by doubling the split half of a coconut frond, 

 threading the pinnae under and over in a darning pattern, gather- 

 ing their ends together and knotting them; the rim being supplied 

 by the split rachis. So much were these associated with women's 

 drudgery that the men considered it quite undignified for them 

 to touch one. A youth whom I commissioned to bring me a 

 specimen to draw, amused me by carrying the offensive article at 

 arm's length and flinging it down before me with an exj^ression 



"Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiii., p. 378. 

 P P 



