The shapes of nearly all the vessels are very elegant, as is likely to be the case from the models employed by the maker. They are often wonderfully elaborate specimens of workmanship. Permanently covered vessels, with a hole in the lid, are very common, and Mr. Williams saw one jar as large as a hogshead, that was furnished with four openings for the purpose of filling and emptying it rapidly. The most remarkable examples are the compound vessels, several being united together at the point where they touch, and further connected by arched handles. In some cases, even the handles are hollow, and have an opening at the top, so that the vessels can be filled or emptied through them. This compound form has lately been copied by Europeans. Considering the amount of labor and artistic skill which is given to pottery, it is a pity that the natives are not better off for material and firing. The material is very coarse, and the very imperfect mode of baking fails to give to the vessels the hard and almost imperishable quality which distinguishes properly prepared earthenware. After the vessels have been shaped, and the decorative patterns traced on them with a sharp stick, they are placed on the ground close together, but not touching each other, and covered with a quantity of dried leaves, grass, reeds, and similar materials. The pile is then lighted, and when it has burned itself out the baking is supposed to be finished. Those pots that are to be glazed are rubbed, while still hot, with kawri, the same resin which has already been mentioned in the account of New Zealand. * * * * * As may be expected in an island population, the Fijians are expert fishermen, and employ various means of securing their prey. Nets, weighted at one edge with shells and floated at the other with pieces of light wood, are much used; and so are the hook, the creel, and the weir. In some places a very remarkable net, or rather an imitation of a net, called the _rau_, is used. To the long, flexible stems of creepers are fastened a quantity of split cocoa-nut leaves, so as to make a fringe of considerable depth and very great length, one of these raus sometimes measuring nearly ten thousand feet from one end to the other. When completed, the rau is taken out to sea and thrown into the water, the ends being attached to canoes, which stretch it to a straight line. They then make for a small bay, across which the rau can be drawn, and then capture all the fish by smaller nets or spears. Sometimes they do not trouble themselves to return to the shore, but bring the net round in a circle, the fish being so afraid of the leafy fringe that they avoid it, and keep themselves in the middle of the toils.