ETHNOLOGY HEDLEY. 265 



separate barb and shank, baited and sunk for deep sea fish, and 

 thirdly, those also made of two separate pieces but trailed unbaited 

 on the surface. The two latter types, highly specialised forms, 

 are still in common use, but the former more generalised pattern 

 has been entirely superseded by European metal hooks. The 

 Octopus bait of stone and cowry shells, so frequently used in 

 Polynesia was not seen by me on Funafuti, though Lister records 

 it from Fakaafu. 



SIMPLE FISH-HOOKS. 



Of the old-fashioned hooks carved in one piece no actual speci- 

 mens exist to-day on Funafuti. A few of bone and pearl shell, 

 which had survived till our visit, were carried away by the 

 Expedition, and I am partly dependent for my information upon 

 models of extinct types made for me by old men. 



An old type, the " matou tifa,"* which I 

 saw in the possession of a native, but failed 

 to procure, is figured (fig. 30) from a pencil 

 drawing made on the spot. It was of pearl 

 shell, about two inches in diameter and a 

 third of an inch thick. So excessive js the 

 curvature that the inner margin describes 

 three-quarters of a circle. The base is ex- 

 panded to afford a grasp for the fishing-line, 

 the tip is tapered gradually to a sharp point, 

 distant a third of the circumference from Fig. 30. 



which is a sharp backwardly directed barb. 



Such hooks were seen by Captain Cook in Tahiti, and the manu- 

 facture of them he thus describes : " The manner of making them 

 is very simple, and every fisherman is his own artificer : the shell 

 is first cut into square pieces, by the edge of another shell, and 

 wrought into a form corresponding with the outline of the hook 

 by pieces of coral, which are sufficiently rough to perform the 

 office of a file ; a hole is then bored in the middle, the drill being 

 no other than the first stone they pick up that has a sharp corner : 

 this they fix into the end of a piece of bamboo, and turn it between 

 the hands like a chocolate mill ; when the shell is perforated, and 

 the hole sufficiently wide, a small file of coral is introduced, by 

 the application of which the hook in a short time is completed, 

 few costing the artificer more than a quarter of an hour."f Finsch 

 gives a description which corresponds with Cook's, and illustrates 

 his remarks with diagrams of half-made hooks from Nukuor in 

 the Carolines.^ 



* In Mariner's Tongan Vocabulary, fish-hook is " matow." 



t Cook loc. tit., p. 219. 



J Finsch Zoc. cit., p. 333, pi. iii.. figs. 9, a., b. 



