Note 32 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

Waltershausen tells us that in Polynesia the cultivated land belonged to the king and nobility, to the exclusion of the labouring classes. The upper classes also owned the fruit-trees, the small coral islets surrounding the larger islands, the lakes, the rivers, and those parts of the sea which extended from the land to the reefs. The untilled land was the property of the tribe and, unless the king forbade it, every one might cut the wood growing on it for building houses and canoes; but only the ruling classes might take it into cultivation32.