Chapman. — On the Worhing of Greenstone. 521 



and caressed with much affection, and those present cut them- 

 selves severely in token of their regard for the deceased. 

 These amongst other manatnngas (keepsakes or heirlooms) 

 are much valued. When not received from friends, similar 

 objects may be purchased for a trifle. Similarly, Thomson, 

 describing it as the most valued of all their ornaments, varying 

 in size from a shilling to a plate, says, " When a long-absent 

 relative arrives at a village the hei-tiki is taken from his neck 

 and wept over for the sake of those who formerly wore it. 

 There is no doubt they are handed down from father to son 

 for generations — indeed, for centuries. They were deposited 

 with the bones of the dead until they were removed to their 

 final resting-place." The practice of bm-ying them when the 

 last of a family dies continues to this day, and is doubtless 

 the reason why so many of them and other valuable objects 

 are found buried. 



Dieffenbach refers in somewhat similar terms to the prac- 

 tice of wearing them by Maoris of both sexes, and connects 

 them with the grotesque colossal busts at Easter Island and 

 elsewhere. Thomson shows the reverence in which they were 

 held as representing the dead, narrating a story of an English 

 sailor travelling with him who dared to remove one from a 

 monument by tlae roadside, and only saved his life by hastily 

 restoring it. 



The hci-tiki is best described as a grotesque squat figure 

 with a big head and attenuated legs, resembling some kinds of 

 Hindoo idols. Its arms are bent, and its feet meet below. 

 The hands, as on the great tikis of wood, and, indeed, in all 

 Maori carvings, have only tliree fingers. Mr. Tylor, in his 

 " Early History of Mankind," quoted with approval on this 

 head by Mr. Travers, says, " Some New-Zealanders lately in 

 London were asked why these tikis usually, if not always, 

 have but three fingers on their hands ; and they replied that if 

 an image is made of a man and any one should insult it the 

 affront would have to be revenged, and to avoid such a contin- 

 gency the tikis were made with only three fingers, so that, not 

 being any one's image, no one was bound to notice what hap- 

 pened to them." 



It is worthy of note that Parkinson, who went out with 

 Cook on his first voyage, never figures a really good hei-tiki, 

 though several flat ill-finished specimens appear in his book. 

 It may be that the highly-worked specimens were rarer then 

 than fifty or sixty years later, when the missionaries began to 

 describe them. 



Writing to me on the subject of the manufacture of hei- 

 tikis, Mr. Helms says, " I was told by a Maori at Blenheim 

 that as many as eight or nine slaves w^ere given for one. Have 

 you heard anything like this ? I tried also to find out how 



