72 



HAWAIIAN STONE IMPLEMENTS. 



Ring Cutting. — The native Hawaiian bambn is of small diameter and so could 

 not be used as the larger species are, so ingeniouslj', by the islanders of the western 

 Pacific to cut disks and rings from stone or shell, but the process has produced so many 

 specimens in all large ethnological collections that it may fairlj' be described here. If the 

 Hawaiians could have had it the making of ulumaika would have been greatly sim- 

 plified. I have selefted for illustration a large heavy ring of limestone used as a ciiidalo 



or god on one of the Solomon group, 

 and it will be seen in Fig. 70 that 

 tiie central hole is cleanly bored. 

 No. 1883 is 9.6 inches in diameter 

 and it was probably rounded in the 

 Hawaiian way between stones, but 

 the hole which measures, as seen 

 bv the scale, onl}' 3.2 inches was 

 bored with the bambu drill. The 

 two lower rings in the same figure 

 are of a much harder material, the 

 shell of the huge bivalve Tridacna 

 ,i^'igas., common through Micronesia 

 and tlie Bismarck archipelago. 

 I have seen good steel drills broken 

 in the attempt to pierce this shell, 

 and yet it will be seen that the 

 bambu has done its work with 

 success and neatness. The rings, 

 which come from northeastern New 

 Guinea, are used as bangles or 

 wristlets and are made by patiently 

 twisting a loaded bambu of suit- 

 able diameter and armed with silicious sand and water. A fragment of the shell is 

 bound around with slips of rattan, as shown in Fig. 71, and fitted snugl}' into a cavity 

 of a block of light suberose wood, probably a species of Eiy//iri)ia. With the feet rest- 

 ing on this block the workman twists right and left the ever shortening bambu, which 

 is four or five feet long at the start and usually has a stone of one or two pounds 

 weight attached to one side. Water and sand joined to the silica of the bambu will 

 in time work through the hard shell. In a specimen of the bambu in the Bishop 

 Museum the cutting edge is roughl}' serrated and thin. When the central hole was 

 bored a larger bambu was used to complete the ring. 



[404] 



FIG. 



RINGS OF I,i:\IESTONE AND SHELL. 



