being involute throughout. At the bottom of the handle there is a sort of shell design—an open volute, forming a knob, covered with the same detailed carving as the blade. Immediately above this terminal scroll-work the handle is perforated to receive a thong or flax-string. The authenticity of this relic is undoubted, and to the eye of the practised expert its genuine Maori character is placed beyond doubt at the first glance. I made a careful pencil-drawing of it at the museum, but Professor Young, the chief curator, has at my request been kind enough since to get it photographed for me, and one of the prints accompanies this note by way of illustration (Plate LI.).

There are four specimens of the mira - tuatini in the British Museum collection; one of these is like that figured in Cook's “Voyages,” two others are of similar pattern but much coarser make, and the fourth is in the form of a long lancet (measuring about a foot) with four sharks' teeth let in near the extremity, immediately below a paua-shell eye.

It is said, with what truth I know not, that the hand-swords from the Gilbert Islands mentioned above are used by the islanders as instruments of torture, or for punishing unfortunate slaves. Even as a fighting weapon, in the hands of a desperate man, I could imagine their inflicting terrible flesh-wounds, especially among combatants whose only livery is nature's skin, and whose conflicts are chiefly hand-to-hand. But, for whatever purpose intended, the arrangement of erect, unevenly-pointed shark's teeth gives a very effectual sawing-edge. May not this have been used by the ancient Maori as an instrument of self-torture? In former times it was the universal practice of Maori mourners for the dead (more especially the women) to cut and gash themselves, so as to induce great physical suffering, sharp shells or the cutting-edge of a splinter of glass-obsidian (mata-tuhua) being generally used for that purpose; the more intense the grief for the departed the deeper the cuts. Cook, in his “First Voyage” (vol. ii., p. 290), in giving an account of his first contact with the Maoris, says, “Among the persons of the family there was a woman who had her arms, legs, and thighs frightfully cut in several places, and we were told that she had inflicted these wounds upon herself in token of her grief for the loss of her husband, who had lately been killed and eaten by their enemies, who had come from some place to the eastward which the Indians pointed out.” This custom was continued in some parts of the country for years after the introduction of Christianity; and in my boyhood I have seen female mourners with their cheeks, arms, and breasts painfully gashed in short parallel lines, the blood streaming from the