At the beginning of this year Polly began to show the younger generation — the league members — the secrets of her craft. Her desire to preserve the knowledge and craft of her ancestors was as strong as the desire of the younger ones to learn. Two days of each week are set aside for Polly to teach the others; the women arrive after breakfast and continue until ten in the evening. Those who are already skilled workers cook meals for the families. Polly teaches all the flax crafts. Since January, the ladies have not only learnt how to make mats and baskets, but also piupiu and korowai, and they have held a taniko competition. They have already mastered the simpler parts of these crafts, but when complicated patterns have to be woven in mats, they still sometimes need Polly. In the accompanying photographs Polly herself demonstrates the making of a simple mat.

MAKING MATS No better description of mat-making could be given than that by Te Rangihiroa, published in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute in 1923. We present below brief notes on each of the photographs printed in this issue. In these notes we quote extensively from the late Sir Peter Buck's work. 1. The leaf is split into strips: ‘The margins and midrib of the leaf are first split off with the thumb-nail. The two half-blades freed by the removal of the midrib are held together with the left hand while the right thumb-nail splits them into even widths, As the thumb-nail worked across the blade from right to left, forefinger and middle finger followed through the openings made. Holding the butt end of the blade with the left hand, the right fingers are simply drawn along the blade to the tip, and completely separate all the divisions. Holding the mid-part of the blade with the freed hand (as in the picture), the fingers of the left hand were slipped between the divisions, and ran them down to the butt junction.’ 2. The Beginning: Polly follows a common method of beginning, in using unsplit butt portions. The butts have not the full width of the leaf; most of them have four strips attached.