up long ago, one night when he went to the well to fetch water. Nicholas has given us, on the authority of his friend Duaterra, the most particular account that has appeared of the inferior deities of New Zealand. Their number, according to him, is very great, and each of them has his distinct powers and functions; one being placed over the elements, another over the fowls and fishes, and so of the rest. Deifications of the different passions and affections, also, it seems, find a place in this extended mythology. In another part of his work, Nicholas remarks, as corroborative of the Malay descent of the New Zealanders, the singular coincidence, in some respects, between their mythology and that of the ancient Malay tribe, the Battas of Sumatra, whose extraordinary cannibal prac tices we have already detailed; especially in the circumstance of the three principal divinities of the Battas having precisely the same functions assigned to them with the three that occupy the same rank in the system of the New Zealanders.* ♦The religion, and superstitions and legends of the Maoris are dealt with in Sir George Grey’s “Polynesian Mythology,’’ Mr. 8. Percy Smith’s “Hawaiki,” articles by Mr. Elsdon Best in the “Transactions of the New Zealand Institute,” articles by that author and by Mr. Percy Smith in the “Journal of the Polynesian Society,” Mr. E. Tregear’s “The Maori Race,” and Mr. J. C. Andersen’s “Maori Life in Ao-tea."