Spades.

The literary history of the spade in the Pacific is both brief and obscure.^*

An article is represented in the Ethnographical Album,^† which Dr. Gill describes as "the ancient spade of the Mangaiians, always used in a squatting posture, also used (and intended to be used) as a club "; Edge-Partington further figures a series^‡ described in the margin as "steering paddles,"^§ but which are indexed as "spades"; from Fiji a spade-blade of tortoiseshell, bored for lash-ing to a handle, is represented; ^‖ from Samoa is shown^¶ an instrument referred to as a "spade (?) of Pinna shell"; and from Tonga a Meleagrina margaritifera valve, bored and similarly mounted on a pole, is classified as a "spade(?)"^*

On Fakarava, Paumotu Group, Stolpe obtained a "model of spade wherewith aforetime they buried their dead. The model, which is of the actual size, consists of a staff, with a great pearl mussel shell fast bound to either end by coconut plaiting. The entire implement is 146 cm. long."^†

Though the peculiar method of mounting the blade by boring and lashing to the pole, may be useful as a clue in distinguishing the Pacific spade, it cannot be regarded as a feature separating it from other implemeats. A type of New Caledonian axe^† shares this character, and in the Gilbert Group the paddles are made in this way, as Wilkes has shown^‡ and Finsch confirmed.^§ With the Gilbert paddle agrees another figured from the Admiralty Islands by Moseley,^‖ and a specimen from Anchorite Island in the Australian Museum. Indeed the Pacific spade suggests for itself a polyphyletic origin from the paddle of the Gilbert Islander, the club of the Mangaiian, or the axe of the New Caledonian.

Fig. 23.

In the Ellice, two agricultural implements existed. A species of mattock, resembling an adze of which the minor limb was lengthened and armed with turtle carapace, was obtained by one of the officers of H.M.S. "Penguin," on Funafuti. A cognate tool is mentioned by Pinschfrom Mortlock Island.^¶ Another of our party Fig. 23. also procured some indifferent models of a spade, or long-handled shovel, on Funafuti, where their use had been long abandoned and their place taken by metal bladed substitutes.

On Nukulailai, however, I found this type surviving and in daily use. A specimen I there procured is shown by figs. 23 and 24. This spade is in two parts, a handle and a blade; the former is a pole, perhaps of Ochrosia wood, five feet long and an inch and a quarter in diameter, and the latter an oval, spoon-shaped board of perhaps Calophyllum wood, sixteen inches long, nine wide, and half-an-inch thick, proximally it narrows to a shaft four inches long and one and a half wide, which is bound to the pole, additional strength being given by lashings which pass round the pole through two pairs of perforations in the

Fig. 24

^* Cook—A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean,, i., 1785, p. 392. A Maori spade and hoe are figured by Taylor—New Zealand and its inhabitants, 1870, pp. 360, 423; and the Hawaiian by Ellis—loc. cit., iv., p. 195.

^† Edge-Partington—op. cit., i., pl. cxxviii., fig. 3.

^‡ Wilkes—loc. cit., v., p. 52, fig.

^§ Finsch—loc. cit., viii., 1893, p.70, fig.12.

^‖ Moseley—Journ Anthrop. Inst., vi., 1877, pl. xxii.

^¶ Finsch—loc.cit.

page 262blade, bored respectively at five and seven inches from the stem. The blade is straight longitudinally, but transversely the curving sides rise an inch and a half above the centre. Such are frequently constructed of broken or disused wooden basins.