Page:The disappearance of useful arts.djvu/14

118 of pottery in Melanesia and the ancient pottery of Lepers' Island was covered by many feet of clay-like earth which would probably have been suitable for the manufacture of pots if the art had not disappeared through some other cause. Though absence of raw material may have caused the loss of the potter's art in Polynesia, it cannot explain its disappearance in Melanesia, nor can it explain the loss of the canoe and of the bow and arrow.

Material and utilitarian motives of other kinds have been suggested to account for the disuse of the bow and arrow as a weapon. Gill has suggested that the eastern Polynesians did not use the bow in war because their arrows could not pierce the folds of cloth with which they covered their bodies. Even if this were a sufficient motive in eastern Polynesia, it would not explain the disuse of the bow elsewhere in Oceania. Again, Peschel has suggested the absence of land-mammals as the cause of the disuse of the bow and arrow in Polynesia, pointing out that the bow is a weapon which requires constant practice in peace in order to ensure accuracy of aim in war. The use of the bow and arrow in sport throughout Polynesia seems, however, to provide the necessary element of practice and the archery of Tahiti must almost certainly have had such practice as its original motive.

Peschel explained the disuse of the bow and arrow in New Britain and New Ireland in the same way, ignoring the fact that there is no such difference in the nature of the fauna of different parts of the Bismarck Archipelago and New Guinea as will account of the use of the bow in some places and not in others. Further, Peschel seems to have forgotten the fact that the bow is the prevailing weapon of southern Melanesia where land-mammals are even more