adds that this, "if I do not much mistake, is also the reason why an old besom (which is a sort of dried bush) is put up at the top-mast head of a ship Or boat when she is to be sold." If we are to regard the broom as a substitute for a bush, then putting it out may perhaps be connected with the Tavern Keepers' bush, which, originally intended to indicate that ale was sold in his house, was no doubt associated in the public mind with the jovial entertainment to be found within.
Wm. Self. Weeks.
Westwood, Clitheroe.
The Easter Island Figures.
(Folk-Lore, vol. xxxi. p. 294 et seqq.; vol. xxxii. p. 70 et seqq.)
The letters of Dr. W. H. R. Rivers and Mr. Henry Balfour on the nature of the head-dresses of the stone statues of Easter Island are of great interest, and raise questions of importance far beyond the bounds of Easter Island and the Solomons. Mr. Balfour asks whether cylindrical hats, such as Dr. Rivers suggests as the originals of the stone cylinders of Easter Island, have ever been recorded as being worn in the Pacific. I do not know whether they have been recorded in the Solomons, but they were certainly in use in New Caledonia, as is shown by Hodge's drawing, now displayed at Greenwich Hospital, of a man from that island wearing such a head-dress. This portrait is reproduced and is easily accessible in the official account of Cook's second voyage, and also in George Forster's account. Though such a head-dress has never been recorded as worn by the Maoris, it occurs occasionally on tekoteko, ancestral figures carved in wood and placed on the gables of village store-houses. An excellent example is figured in Dominion Museum Bulletin I (1905), Fig. W., where it is described by the late Augustus Hamilton as follows: "The central specimen is of special interest as it wears the curious high cap or ornament frequently seen in carvings in this district [Rotorua], recalling the crowns or caps of the Easter Island stone figures." It is vertical behind, but in front it slopes out slightly in the lower part a little above
