iv Prejace. 



Lunalilo). King Kaniehaineha V., were all living and willing to contribute to the notebooks I was 

 filling more with a desire of gaining and retaining information than with any view of future publica- 

 tion. Many humbler contributors added to the store when in mountain journeys they wrote for me 

 the names they all then knew of bird or plant or place. 



For years these notes were useless although they came back with me to these islands in 1888, 

 but when a few years ago I expected to leave the Hawaiian group forever, I destroyed all that I could 

 lay hand upon as useless baggage in my proposed wanderings. That any escaped was due to the 

 change of plans before I had time to read them all through before consigning them to the fire. From 

 this examination they are still fresh in my memory although it is quite possible that the details 

 might have been more complete had the originals been still before me. 



From these sovtrces more than from the voyagers, I shall draw in the proposed sketches of the 

 Hawaiians. I have left untold the tiresome accounts of battles, and I have been .so unorthodox an 

 historian as to care very little for thronal succession, if this term can be used where the kings had not 

 e\'en a stool to sit upon, or for the genealogies, for I ha\"e seen them falsified to satisfy ambition. 

 I have already published an account of the curious F'eather Work of the Hawaiians and I now take 

 up the Stone Work, intending to continue the series with Wood Work, Mats and Baskets, House 

 Building, Food and Cookery, Games and Sports, Warfare, Dress and Ornament, Religion, Kapa 

 Making, Cord and Netting, Fisheries, Canoes and \'oyages, Me.-'icine, Chronologv, Water Rights, 

 Land Tenure and Kapu. These chapters are partly in order and will l)e presented as material on 

 hand seems sufficient, and not necessarily in the above sequence. 



In this chapter I have endeavored to illustrate all the genuine old Hawaiian implements, but 

 constantl}' in the course of writing new examples have come to me and I cannot suppose that I have 

 encompassed all within the limits of these few pages. It has been an object with me in all this work 

 to present to those who cannot examine the collecfions in this Museum as clear an idea as possible of 

 what they comprise, and as this must be rather in the nature of material for farther study and com- 

 parison, I have not encumbered my pages with man}- references to other works or parallel examples, 

 which might exhibit the number of books on kindred subjeifts I may have read, but would add little 

 to a knowledge of these Hawaiian matters. Where the material exists in this Museum, or is familiar 

 to me in other museums, for comparison between Hawaiian and other Polynesian examples I have 

 briefly called attention to the divergence or parallelism, but I have refrained, as far as possible, from 

 mere conjedlural relationships as proving common derivation, preferring to reserve such discussion 

 until all the evidence at my command in all the departments of this series has been fairly presented. 



Alamakani, October 26, 1901. 



