ETHNOLOGY HEDLEY. 



303 



In the Banks Island and the New Hebrides " the game is played 

 by two parties, who count pigs for the furthest casts, the number 

 of pigs counted as gained depending on the number of knots in 

 the winning tika. There is a proper season for the game, that in 

 which the yams are dug, the reeds on which the yam vines had 

 been trained having apparently served originally for the tika. 

 When two villages engage in a match they sometimes come to 

 blows."* 



Ellis also describes this game from Tahiti and 

 Hawaii, f Gill has given a chant from the Hervey 

 Islands for a reed throwing match for women. J 



Dr. Gill notes in his Diary that it was for- 

 merly the custom on the island of Nanomana, 

 Ellice Group, that "when a young man wins 

 a reed throwing match, his own sister testifies 

 her joy by coming into the assembly stark naked 

 and clapping her hands." 



A model of this toy made for me by an old 

 native of Funafuti, is represented by figs. 76 and 

 77. The entire article is called " jiga," and the 

 separate head is '* urotoa." The stem is a light 

 rod of Scaevola wood, an ounce in weight, three 

 feet in length, and half an inch in diameter ; 

 the head, perhaps modeled from a whale's tooth, 

 is of Pemphis wood, a cone whose truncated base 

 is produced into a spike, carved in one piece, 

 in weight four ounces, in total length eight 

 inches, the spike being a third thereof, and in 

 greatest breadth an inch and a half. It is 

 mounted by thrusting the spike home into the 

 soft pith of Scaevola rod. 



Another toy consisted of a cube of plaited pandanus leaf, served 

 as a light ball, with which, on the beach, groups of girls amused 

 themselves by tossing to each other and catching. A specimen of 

 the "anou," as this is called on Funafuti, is shown by fig. 78, 

 it weighs three-quarters of an ounce, and measures two inches 

 cube. 



From Ruk, in the Carolines, the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum 

 possess a " cube of plaited pandanus leaf used as a ball." 



Ellis has described a game, " haru raa puu," played by the 

 Tahitians with a large ball of the tough stalks of the plantain 

 leaves twisted closely and firmly together. 



* Codrington The Melanesians, 1891, p. 340. 



t Ellis Polynesian Kesearches, i., 1836, p. 227 ; iv., p. 197. 



J Gill Myths and Songs, 1876, p. 179. 



Ellis loc. cit., i., p. 214. 



Pig. 76. Fig. 77. 



