of being made very decorative, this considera tion would be much regarded, and still more where no clothing was worn at all. In such cases, the hair, either of the head or of the beard, has usually been cherished with very affectionate care, and the mode of dressing it has been made matter of anxious regulation. Many of the barbarous nations of antiquity had each a method of cutting the hair peculiar to itself; and it was sometimes accounted the deepest mark of servitude which a conqueror could impose when he compelled the violation of this sacred rule of national manners. We have a remnant of these old feelings in the reverence with which his beard is regarded by a Turk of the present day. It is recorded, too, that no reform which Peter the Great of Russia essayed to introduce among his semi- barbaric subjects was so pertinaciously resisted as his attempt to abbreviate their beards. Marsden, on asking a New Zealander what he conceived the atua to be, was answered— ‘‘An immortal shadow.” Although possessed, however, of the attributes of immortality, omni presence, invisibility, and supreme power, he is universally believed to be in disposition merely a vindictive and malignant demon. When one of the missionaries had one day been telling a number of them of the infinite goodness of God, they asked him if he was not joking with them. They believe that when ever any person is sick, his illness is