have the continual benefit of the lamentations of the women. When a person is ill and the tohunga sees that the cause of his illness is located where he is residing, he tells him to go away to another place, and there live for a year or two: the trouble will not assail him there. This treatment, which is termed whakahehe, is suitable for illness due to atua or makutu (i.e., demons or sorcery). Sickness made a person tapu because of the atua or demon, ngarara or lizard, kikokiko or ancestral ghost, entering into the body of the afflicted. The sick were removed from their own houses, and had huts built for them in the bush, at a considerable distance from the pa or village, where they lived apart; if any remained in their houses and died there the buildings became tapu, were painted with red ochre, and could not again be used, which put the tribe to a great inconvenience, as some houses were the common abode of perhaps thirty or forty different people. In some cases, when the tohunga has divined that the disease is the result of an infringement of the tapu, and the patient is being punished by the gods for his wickedness, he banishes the victim, who takes up his abode perhaps in some miserable hut that cannot protect him from the evening breeze, much less keep out the dew and rain. Here he lies unattended, no person being permitted to hold further communication with him or to supply him with food. In some cases the sick person is compelled to he out-of-doors on the ground, either without any covering or within a roughly prepared hut. At the present time a tent is often used, and some person remains in attendance on the invalid, but the attendance is of the poorest kind. Among the Tuhoe natives it is seldom, says Mr. Best, that one can detect any sign of affection for or loving care of a sick person, except sometimes in the case of children. No attempt is made to provide the sick with comforts of any kind. “I have often,” he adds, “prepared food for sick people here, but find it necessary to take the food myself and watch the invalid eat it, otherwise he would see but little of it.” Dieffenbach observed, however, that the Maoris with whom he came in contact provided the sick with better and more easily digestible food than usual—with cockles, fresh fishes, fish - broth, and game. The root or rhizome of the edible fern (Pteris esculenta), which is rich in starch and farinaceous matter, was also given to the sick. The beliefs of the Maori relative to the origin of diseases had a powerful tendency to stifle every feeling of sympathy and compassion, and to restrain all from the exercise of those acts of kindness that are so grateful to the afflicted, and afford such alleviation to their sufferings. The attention of the relatives and friends was directed to the offended