SILK SPINNING AND HANDIWORK 65 



Solomon Islands. The natives make a kite of the large flat leaves 

 of one of the local trees, sewing them together and stiffening them 

 with tough strips to produce an object about two and a half feet 

 long and nearly a foot in width. The completed kite is embellished 

 with five wings of pandanus leaf. A flying line is made of fiber 

 twine, ordinarily about one-third of a mile long, while the tail is 

 another length of twine from one to three hundred yards in length, 

 at the end of which is tied a tassel made from the web of silk spiders. 

 The kites are then flown over the seas either from the shore or 

 from canoes in such a way that the spider tassel skips along the 

 water and entices fish to strike. The golden-yellow silk entangles 

 the teeth of the fish, and, after some maneuvering with kite and 

 boat, it is lifted into the canoe by means of a dip net. 



Still another intriguing method of capturing small fish is prac- 

 ticed by certain Solomon Island natives. This account by H. B. 

 Guppy is from The Solomon Islands and Their Natives: 



The following ingenious snare was employed on one occasion 

 by my natives in Treasury, when I was anxious to obtain for 

 Dr. Gunther some small fish that frequented the streams on the 

 north side of the island. I was very desirous to have some of 

 these fish, and my natives were equally anxious to display their 

 ingenuity in catching them. They first bent a pliant switch into 

 an oval hoop about a foot in length, over which they spread a 

 covering of stout spider-web which was found in a wood hard 

 by. Having placed the hoop on the surface of the water, buoy- 

 ing it up with two light sticks, they shook over it a portion of 

 a nest of ants, which formed a large kind of tumour on the 

 trunk of a neighboring tree, thus covering the web with a num- 

 ber of struggling young insects. This snare was allowed to float 

 down the stream, when the little fish, which were between two 

 and three inches long, commenced jumping up at the white 

 bodies of the ants from underneath the hoop, apparently not 

 seeing the intervening web on which they lay, as it appeared 

 nearly transparent in the water. In a short time, one of the small 

 fish succeeded in getting its snout and gills entangled in the web, 

 when a native at once waded in, and placing his hand under the 

 entangled fish, secured the prize. With two or three of these 

 web hoops we caught nine or ten of these little fish in a quarter 

 of an hour. 3 



8 H. B. Guppy, The Solomon Islands and Their Natives, London, 1887, p. 157. 



