94 
ETHNOLOGICAL NOTES 
These large grooved axes are almost certainly ancient, and 
although the use of the hollows on them has never been 
observed, they are in every way similar to those on the well- 
known smaller type of millstone used by the Australian abo- 
rigines. The hollows are also found, very rarely, on some of 
the grooved axes from the Darling Eiver, New South Wales, 
as far north as Louth, Possibly there was some ritualistic 
significance in this practice. It cannot have been merely a 
means of economizing material for there is no lack of suitable 
grinding stone in SW. Victoria, 
Pottery from Watom Island, Territory of New Guinea. 
Watom Island lies a few miles oif the north coast of New 
Britain, in the Territory of New Guinea. During 1909, 
Father Meyer, of the Catholic Mission on the island, found 
fragments of pottery which had been washed out of the soil 
in a ravine during heavy i*ain. Later, during excavations, he 
recovered a large quantity of sherds (about 2 cwt.) from 
half a metre and two metres below the surface. The pottery is 
of a type (piite different from any of the wares known from 
New Guinea or the adjacent islands, and the Watom Island 
natives had no knowledge of it. It is different also from the 
ancient pottery found on the mainland of New Guinea, at 
Collingwood Bay (1), or that from near Pinschhafen (2). The 
discovery was described by Father Meyer in Anthropos, 1909 
and 1910. 
Fig. 4. Impressed Decoration on Watom Is. Pottery. X 1. 
Most of the pottery is plain, but a great deal of it is deco- 
rated with patterns impressed on the clay before firing. The 
lines of the patterns consist of rows of small rectangular dots 
