II4 CLUB TYPES OF NUCLEAR POLYNESIA. 
drical motive with smooth curves; in the club with rugose panels the 
lip conforms to the heavier type and finds expression in rather wide 
triangular form approximating the equilateral; in the decorated clubs 
of the third species the lip expresses with great grace the motive of 
strength through vertical dimension and apparent lightness by reduc- 
tion of the transverse dimension. 
The variety of the panel likewise seems lacking in critical value. We 
find in two species—that with roughened panel and the decorated type 
—the panel ending up-shaft with a clearly expressed line of demarca- 
tion, except that in 2474 this detail is a trifle obscured. In the species 
with rugose panel the rugosity slowly merges in the smoothness of the 
shaft with no distinct demarcation. 
The carved rib thrown across the angle of lip and head is constant in 
all of the simpler pieces of the roughened panel, is entirely absent from 
the pieces of rugose panel, and is present in 2 out of the 5 decorated 
pieces. Apparently this presents a gradual process of elimination as 
we progress away from the prototype. 
In my interpretation of all these elements in their combination as we 
find them in these pieces, the key to the solution of the problem lies in 
the blade-like prominence on the face of the head. 
In position it represents the axe-mounting rather than the adze. I 
note at once the objection that in Polynesian culture we do not identify 
the axe; the adze is the universal mount for the blade of wood-chopping 
utensils. Against this objection I set the fact that in the consideration 
of the other metamorphs we have drawn freely upon stone prototypes 
which yet remain in use in Melanesia, and we have drawn thus freely 
upon this source because of our recognition of the fact, already satis- 
factorily established through linguistic methods, that Polynesian migra- 
tion of the Proto-Samoan wave of folk-movement which is originally 
responsible for the peopling of Nuclear Polynesia has been drawn down 
the Melanesian island chains from Indonesia along each aspect of New 
Guinea by way of the Bismarck Archipelago and Torres Straits 
respectively. In northern Melanesia of the Bismarck Archipelago 
and its northern island outliers, in all parts of New Guinea, we not only 
find the adze and the axe, but we have every intermediate stage, and 
these are very handsomely represented in the museum collections. 
As between the adze and the axe in these Melanesian cultures there 
is no difference in the blade itself. It is either a stone worked down to 
a thickness of some 2 inches, pointed at one end and regularly widening 
toward the blade of from 4 to 6 inches, which is slightly convex away 
from the point, and is rubbed down to an edge either on one or on both 
faces; or else it is a similarly shaped cutting from the shell of the great 
mollusc of those seas, the Chama (Tridacna) gigas. 
Two types of axe-mounting are observed. In one the end of the 
wooden shaft is perforated and the blade is shoved home through the 
