BY C. HEDLEY. 
615 
was adorned by a pattern usual in that locality, white zigzag lines 
on a black ground divided the space into panels filled by a white 
scroll on a red ground, such as Haddon regards as degenerate and 
conjoined birds' head. Each panel may possibly typify a croco- 
dilian scute, and certain forwardly directed loops which terminate 
the carving may even stand for hind limbs in a state of extreme 
degeneration and reduplication. 
II. The Palm Leaf Creel. 
(Plate lviii., fig. 2.) 
From its perishable nature this useful domestic utensil is 
unlikely to have reached a niche in the Ethnological Collection 
of any Museum. The only mention I have noticed of it in 
literature is by Lieut. Boyle T. Somerville, who, writing on the 
ISTew Hebrides, observes* :— " The coconut palm leaf is very 
ingeniously woven in all the islands by plaiting together the long 
tongues of the frond, beginning at the rib and joining the tips. 
A mouth is made by splitting the rib down the middle, and thus 
a very capacious basket, with a mouth fitting as tightly as a purse, 
is quickly made. Pigs, yams, &c, for sale are usually carried in 
them." As I have seen no published illustration of this basket, 
this opportunity is embraced of submitting a sketch made in 
July, 1890, in a native hut in the village of Mita on the north 
shore of Milne Bay, British New Guinea. Here they were called 
Porha, and were the exclusive property of the women, who easily 
manufactured them by doubling the split half of a coconut frond, 
threading the pinnae under and over in a darning pattern, gather- 
ing their ends together and knotting them; the rim being supplied 
by the split rachis. So much were these associated with women's 
drudgery that the men considered it quite undignified for them 
to touch one. A youth whom I commissioned to bring me a 
specimen to draw, amused me by carrying the offensive article at 
arm's length and flinging it down before me with an expression 
* "Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiii., p. 378. 
P P 
