Page:The disappearance of useful arts.djvu/13

117 parts of Oceania may have been due to lack of suitable wood and that of pottery to the want of clay.

There are certain features of the art of canoe-making in the Pacific which suggest the lack of raw material as a possible cause. There are islands of the Pacific where there are no trees from which a dug-out canoe could be made and the people have to depend on the arrival of driftwood. Further, this dependence on driftwood may be necessary even in islands where there are suitable trees owing to the implements of the people being incapable either of cutting down a tree of sufficient size or of hollowing it after it has been felled. It is not difficult to see how a people may allow their implements to degenerate till they are incapable of felling or hollowing trees so that after a time they become dependent upon driftwood, and that then some change of current or other cause may allow so long a time to elapse without arrival of suitable wood as to explain the loss of the art.

There is no reason, however, for supposing that this has been the cause of the disappearance of the canoe in either the Torres Islands or Mangareva. The Torres Islands are well wooded and their implements are not notably, if at all, inferior to those of neighbouring groups of islands where the canoe is still made. Again, the picture of the Mangareva raft in Beechey's book shows that the natives were able to use large planks of wood, and absence of suitable material may be put on one side here also.

There is no reason whatever for supposing that absence of suitable material has played any part in the disappearance of the bow but with pottery the case is different. The geological character of many of the islands of the Pacific shows that they must be quite devoid of any material from which pots could be made and the absence of raw material is probably a most important, if not the essential, factor accounting for the absence of pottery from Polynesian culture. Absence of clay, however, will not explain the disappearance