Page:Pounamu, notes on New Zealand greenstone (IA pounamunotesonne00robl).djvu/52

48 pitch of excellence in the art of cutting and grinding greenstone which they afterwards reached. Mention may also be made here of two curious pendants of eel-like form (Figure 25), now in the Dominion Museum of New Zealand. Possibly they were charms for eel-fishing. They are made of different qualities of greenstone. That to the right of the illustration, which is bored, is of fine translucent kahurangi.

This list only gives the most important of these trinkets, which were so highly prized that, as Mr. Elsdon Best records, during the wars of Ruatoki a man's life was redeemed by the gift to his captor of a greenstone ear-ornament. It would be difficult to describe and to figure the many curious shapes into which pieces of stone were ground and fashioned. Figure 26 shews one of crescent form. It is perhaps an amulet, although its inner edge, which is sharpened, suggests a scraper or a cutting tool; but the little pierced projection on its upper side shews that it was designed to be worn as a pendant. Figure 27 shews another of somewhat similar form from the Island of Ruapuke in Foveaux Straits, made of a fine fragment of translucent stone. Some ornaments shaped as the barbs of fish-hooks have been