there was darkness, Rangi, the heavens, lying close to kopapa, the earth. Then Rangi-tokano, one of the offspring of Rangi and Kopapa, sung a powerful incantation song, which caused Rangi, the heavens, to rise above the earth, and thereupon light appeared upon the earth. Then Rangi-tokano made man out of the earth, and called him Te-ao-marama, and from him are descended all the people of the world. Rangi, the heavens, sometimes visits his wife, Kopapa, such visits being followed by copious dews. The Mori-oris do not appear to have had any religious feeling in the ordinary acceptation of the term, although they believed in good and evil spirits, both of whom were known by the common name of Atua. They were very superstitious; and old and young alike were in the habit, it appears, of telling ghost stories as wild and wonderful as the story of the Cock Lane Ghost. Indeed, they believed that, after death, the spirit of the departed had power to return to earth and haunt the living, and that a person visited by the kiko kiko (or evil spirit of the dead), and touched on the head by it, would die very soon after such visitation. To prevent the dead from troubling them, they had a curious custom. As soon as breath had left the body, they would all assemble at midnight in some secluded spot, and proceed to kill the kiko kiko. First kindling a large fire, they would sit round in a circle, each person holding a long rod in his hand; to the end of each rod a tuft of spear grass was tied; they would then sway their bodies to and fro, waving the rods over the fire in every direction, jabbering strange and unintelligible incantations. Attempts were made by the first European settlers to wean them from this foolery, but without success; they would persist in the custom, so one of the settlers determined upon the first opportunity to give them a fright. Hearing of the death of a Mori-ori, and that a party were to meet that night in a certain place to kill the kiko kiko, he arrayed himself in a white sheet and night-cap, whitened his face, and made himself appear as unearthly as possible, and, going stealthily to the place whilst the ceremony was proceeding, he suddenly appeared before them. With one simultaneous yell they cleared the course, and fled to their huts as if a legion of devils were at their heels. In the morning, their miserable, woe-begone faces plainly indicated a sleepless night, and the horrid kiko kiko was the talk amongst them for many months. This experiment, however, succeeded admirably, for their performance was never again repeated. Long after, when they had become more humanized and enlightened, they were told who the kiko kiko of that occasion really was. Upon this they looked very serious, shook their heads, and said it was very bad to play with the kiko kiko. It was by no means an unusual thing for a person to affirm that he or she had been visited by the kiko kiko; in which case, at the