AXES AND ADZES. 



83 



evidently highly valued. 



The last example in the list, which I have photographed with the small adzes 

 to show the extremes, is peculiarly interesting not only from the circumstances men- 

 tioned, but for the remarkable length. It might have been used to cut the interior of 

 coconnt wood drums, or of deep canoes, or even nmeke ; but if so nsed why give it soli- 

 tary entombment in a burial cave ? There were no human remains nor anything else 

 in the small cave, so the finder declared. Although the kapa is verj' durable in dry 

 places it must have mouldered before all traces of a skeleton coitld have vanished. 

 The adze is likely to remain a mystery. No. 4602, if tised as a chisel, must have had 

 some sort of handle, as the fragment is too minute to grasp firmlj-. It maj' have been 

 intended for a borer to use with the pump drill, but it shows no signs of attrition on 

 the vertical edges. As a mechanical proposition it seems difficult to get any efficiency 

 from an ounce of stone used as an adze, unless indeed it had a weighty handle like the 

 New Caledonian adze shown in Fig. 86 A and B. For felling trees the heavy and broad 

 adzes, like No. 3121 or 3122, I have found by experiment quite suitable. 



It is worth while noting that there is in the Bishop Musettm an adze (No. 31 15, 

 not figured) which was in a(5lual use so recently as 1886, and although the stone has 

 been replaced by a plane-iron, the peculiar form remains in the old handle. The latest 

 stone adzes I have seen in use date back to 1S64, although I have no reason to suppose 

 that they were abandoned for some years after that. 



We may now examine a few other adzes from the Pacific Region, that their 

 points of variation from the Hawaiian model may be noted. The Solomon islanders 

 had a chisel-like axe or adze which not infrequently became more of a gouge than 

 chisel. The material is always a dark green stone, neither so fine-grained nor .so hard 

 as the New Zealand greenstone. In all specimens I have seen the se(ftion is either 

 circular or elliptical. I do not claim that all adzes from the Solomon islands are alike, 

 for I do not know of more than a few dozen in all foreign colleAions, and no study has 

 been made of them in their own country'. Fig. 80 shows the two commoner forms, and 



Fig. 81 three of the chisel form which I obtained in Hamburg from the Godeffro}^ col- 



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