GRINDSTONES. 15 



made the stone a whetstone rather than a grindstone and the labor mnst have been 

 immense. In Fig. 9 may be seen examples of grindstones long nsed and now in the 

 Bishop Museum. The illustrations are fair examples of the worn surfaces of Hawaiian 

 grindstones. In all that have been ob.served there is an absence of grooves ; the 

 abraded surface is always an even, shallow concave. 



Grindstones are among the oldest of Hawaiian stone-working tools and their 

 use (except for an occasional knife-sharpening) had ceased long before I had any 

 knowledge of the islanders. That stone balls (Fig. 10) were formed by long-continued 



FIG. 9. HAWAIIAN GRINDSTONES. 



rolling between stones of this class is well known, and I am assured that two long narrow 

 stones like the lower one in Fig. 9 were used for this purpose, a man squatting in the 

 native manner at each end and communicating a reciprocating motion to the upper 

 stone as in the operation of sawing. Without cutting sand the operation must have 

 been a tedious one, yet the many specimens extant show that a great deal of this grind- 

 ing must have been done. The finish is by no means the same on all, but the use to 

 which the balls were put in the games required a fairlj' spherical peripherj'. Immense 

 balls of a generally spherical form but rough surface are known as "puts" of some 

 native Hercules, and these are generally unworked and often merelv the residuary 

 nucleus of a decomposing mass of lava. One ver}- fine one once in a private collecftion 

 on Molokai was fabled to have been rolled nearly the length of that island, destrojing 

 forests in its course. Another in the Bishop Museum more than a foot in its smaller 



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