292 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



THATCHING IMPLEMENTS. 



In thatching and in fastening the rough palm mats to the hut 

 walls, awls and hooks are employed. Edge-Partington has pub- 

 lished sketches of needles thus used in Torres Straits, Tahiti, and 

 New Caledonia,* but I observed none such in the Ellice Group. 

 The collection of awls from that Archipelago exhibits great diversity 

 of material, though agreeing substantially in form. From Nukulailai 

 and Funafuti are specimens shaped from turtle bone, " tui fonu "; 

 one from Funafuti is part of a swordfish bill, "tui sokera"; a third 

 type is the spine of a sting ray, " futta," the serrations of which 

 are ground down to make the tool, a half-made instance of which 

 shows the transition. 



A highly polished specimen of awl is from Funa- 

 futi, it (fig. 54) weighs half an ounce and is seven 

 inches long. The day after I had purchased this 

 from a workman engaged in loading battens with 

 dressed pandanus leaves, I noticed the vendor hard 

 at work with a fresh tool. He was using the handle 

 of a European tooth-brush, ground to a point, and 

 observed cheerily that it was quite as good as the one 

 that he had sold me. 



At Nukulailai I procured the original of fig. 55, 

 whose use is to hook and draw through the string 

 or twig used in fastening up mats, etc. It is carved 

 of hard dark wood, probably Rhizophora, weighs one 

 ounce, and is ten and a half inches long. Hooks 

 resembling these are referred by Edge-Partington to 

 55. 54. Tahiti and Samoa. f 



While stripping the thorns from the edges of 

 pandanus leaves I saw one woman employ a 

 rough leaf thimble to protect the finger-tip. 

 Of this I unfortunately omitted to procure a 

 specimen. 



Tosi. 



A sort of claw is cut from the hard black shell 

 of the coconut, which is called "tosi," and is used 

 Fig. 56. for ripping into fine strips the fibres of the titi 



dresses. The accompanying figure (fig. 56) repre- 

 sents a specimen, two and a half inches long, from Funafuti. 



BROOM. 



An excellent broom, " salu," is made from a couple of hundred 

 of the stiff" mid-ribs of the coconut frond pinnules, stripped, dried, 



* Edge-Partington loc. cit., i., pi. cccxxiii., fig. 10 ; ii., pi. xvii., figs. 7-8, 

 and pi. Ixix., fig. 4. 

 f Edge-Partington loc. cit., ii., pi. xvii., figs. 9, 10 ; pi. xlv., fig. 2. 



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