92 



HAWAIIAN STONE IMPIEMENTS. 





FIG. 90. MAORI CARVED ADZE HANDLE. 



tapers to each end. Doubtless buried in a moist place for many ^-ears its present 

 surface much resembles rusty iron. Another gouge in the colledlion (No. 4555) is 

 3.5 in. long, 0.6 in. wide at cutting edge, and weighs only 2.2 oz. It is ground smooth 

 and well rounded, and with the gouge shown in Fig. 92 seems to have been used in 

 carving the large idols. At least the curved edge exactly fits the interior curve of the 

 nostrils in two of the large idols in this Museum. The smaller gouge must have re- 

 quired some sort of handle, as it is too short to hold firml}- in the fingers. 



Stone Figures. — Of the few animals that fell under the observation of the 

 ancient Hawaiians the dog and pig were by far the most cherished, but I have never 

 seen any image either in wood or stone of these domestic animals, and neither was 

 raised to the dignity of a god, although the deified hero Kamapuaa was half hog half 

 man. Was the totemistic idea too powerful to admit of deifying the limited articles of 

 animal food and so banishing them from the larder ? With certain iish the case was 

 different, and the Shark god was one of the most powerful of the minor deities; hence 

 probabl}' we have a number of more or less accurate representations both in wood and 

 stone of these dreaded fish. Two that are in the Bishop Museum are shown in Fig. 93. 

 It is curious that in the southern Polynesian islands representations of fish, or at least 

 of fish as divinities, were extremely rare, and 3'et the harvest of the sea was quite as 



important to the southern people as to their brethren dwelling north of the equator. 



[424] 



