364 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



" thank-offering,") not only " a portion of food offered to the 

 gods or spirits of the dead," (the Latin " manes") but also 

 these " stars of the Southern Cross." In the Maori constella- 

 tions, the "Pointers" of the Southern Cross* are called the 

 taura, generally supposed to mean " cable" (from taura, a rope), 

 as the cable of the stellar figure called " the canoe of Tamare- 

 reti ;" but as taula means "an anchor "in Tongan, and katau 

 " an anchor" in Marquesan, it is probable that the Southern 

 Cross is the tan, the tau-hd (four-cross), or taura.j It may well 

 be that Massey has solved the problem of the connection between 

 tatan " to mark," (tattoo,) and its connection with the cross in 

 the passages treating of the rite of " young-man-making." The 

 pubescent one had crossed and become established in his man- 

 hood ; hence he was tattooed with the cross, as the sign of 

 foundation. This is the Egyptian tat (the cross, or phallus), and 

 tattu is the region of establishing for ever, in the eschatalogical 

 phase : the place where the tat cross was erected when the child 

 Horus had crossed and been united with his masculine force or 

 virile soul, and the two had become one in tattu (eternal).} 



The point may well be raised : What was the character of the 

 " tatau" among Polynesians formerly? Tattooing seems to 

 have been general, in greater or less degree : the Hawaiians and 

 New Zealanders being the two great sections of the family with 

 whom the face was tattooed as well as parts of the body. In 

 New Zealand, the curves of the modern tattooing ("the tattooing 

 of Mataora ") are said by Mr. White (whose knowledge of the 

 ancient Maori is very great), to have superseded a different 

 fashion for marking called "the mokoJmri" — from the description 

 given to Mr. White by the old priests I drew the picture forming 

 the frontispiece of his new work " The Ancient History of the 

 Maori." It can be seen by this (see Plate XX.) that a peculiar 

 system of marking existed : horizontal and vertical lines arranged 

 in sets of threes. This certainly seems to be more like some kind 

 of writing than the decorative flowing curves of modern " moko." 

 Let us consider the next figure, that of another Polynesian, a 

 Bowditch Islander, drawn from a sketch in Wilkes' U.S. Explor- 

 ing Expedition record. Here the lines are replaced by arrow- 

 heads ; and, although I do not pretend to discern any analogy 

 between these marks and the arrow-headed (or the cuneiform) 

 writing of the Asiatics, I may remind my readers that in Scan- 

 dinavia, in the Eunic system of writing, the letter answering to 

 the Greek tan was called t>/r, and written as an arrow-head, 



* a and /3 Centauri. 



f The feast of the cross was solemnized hy the ancient Persians (accord- 

 ing to Dupuis) a few days after the entrance (crossing) into the Zodiacal 

 sign of Aries, at which time the Southern Cross was visible at night. See 

 " Nat. Gen.," vol. ii., p. 337. 



J See "Book of Beginnings," p. 437. 



