It is very probable, however, that the practice may have had its origin in those vindictive feelings which mix, to so remarkable a degree, in all the enmities and wars of these savages. This is a much more likely supposition than that it originated in the difficulty of procuring other food, in which case, as has been remarked, it could not well have, at any time, sprung up either in New Zealand or in almost any other of the countries in which it is known to prevail. Certain superstitious notions, besides, which are connected with it among this people, sufficiently indicate the motives which must have first led to it; for they believe that, by eating their enemies, they not only dishonour their bodies, but consign their souls to perpetual misery. This is stated by Cook. Other accounts, which we have from more recent authorities, concur in showing that the person who eats any part of the body of another whom he has slain in battle, fancies he secures to himself thereby a portion of the valour or good fortune which had hitherto belonged to his dead enemy. The most common occasion, too, on which slaves are slain and eaten is by way of an offering to the “mana” of a chief or any of his family who may have been cut off in battle. All this would go to prove that the can nibalism of the New Zealanders had, on its first introduction, been intimately associated with certain feelings or notions which seemed to