constant and prying superintendence they imagine him to exercise over their conduct. It would be easy to enumerate many minor superstitions, all indicative of the extraordinary influence of the same belief. They think, for instance, that if they were to allow a fire to be lighted under a shed where there are provisions, their god would kill them. They have many superstitions, also, with regard to cutting their hair. Cook speaks, in the account of his third voyage, of a young man he had taken on board the ship, who, having one day performed this ceremony, could not be prevailed upon to eat a morsel till night, insisting that the atua would most certainly kill him if he did. Cruise tells us that Tetoro, on the voyage from Port Jackson, cut the hair of one of his companions, and continued to repeat prayers over him during the whole operation. Nicholas, having one day found another chief busy in cutting his wife’s hair with a piece of sharp stone, was going to take up the implement after it had been used, but was immediately charged by the chief not to touch it, as the deity of New Zealand would wreak his vengeance on him if he presumed to commit so daring a piece of impiety. “Laughing at his superstition,” continues Nicholas, “I began to exclaim against its absurdity, but like Tooi, on a former occasion, he retorted by ridiculing our preaching, yet at