Stone Adzes of New Zealand.

In common with all other branches of the Polynesian race, the Maori hafted his timber-working stone tools as adzes, not as axes. In connection with these implements there is a peculiar and unusual element to which attention does not appear to have been drawn. In the northern Pacific area we find at the Hawaiian Isles a well-defined type of stone adze possessing an angular tang, easily recognizable wherever seen. In the eastern Pacific we find at the Society Isles another well-marked type of peculiar form, marked by excessive thickness in comparison with its length. At the Cook Isles also we have a definite form of these tools. In the Fiji Group—Melanesian in name, but with a considerable mixture of Polynesian blood in its eastern area—we find two leading types, one of which is circular in cross-section, a form that found little favour among Polynesians. All of the above forms differ widely from the thin-bladed stone tools of the Solomon Isles and New Guinea.

Turning now to New Zealand with some expectation of finding one or two local types of stone adzes, it is somewhat surprising to find that our collections cannot be reduced to two or even four common types. We find here a considerable number of forms illustrating widely different types. We do not see a common form of cross-section among our specimens, as we do among those of the Cook, Society, Hawaiian, and other groups. In New Zealand we note numbers of implements in which the cross-section is rectangular, triangular, oval, ovoid, or subovoid, &c. We find a long narrow form, some thin, some remarkably thick; a flat, wide, comparatively thin type; a short form, thick and carrying an abrupt blade-angle; a form with angular tang, another carrying a curious shoulder-ridge across the