296 PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 



earthen images on the graves/ Bastian, writing of the 

 Coast Negroes, says clay figures of departed chiefs with 

 their families are placed in groups under the village tree. 

 Nothing is added about the makers of these clay images; 

 but in another case we find evidence of priestly origin. Ac 

 cording to Tuckey, a certain fetich-rock on the Congo &quot; is 

 considered as the peculiar residence of Seembi, the spirit 

 which presides over the river; &quot; that on some of the rocks 

 &quot; are a number of raised figures,&quot; made of some composi 

 tion which appears &quot; like stone sculptured in low relief &quot; 

 rude representations of men, beasts, ships, &c. : &quot; they were 

 said to be the work of a learned priest of Nokki, who taught 

 the art to all those who chose to pay him.&quot; 



The Polynesian races yield some evidence : relevant facts 

 are narrated of the Sandwich Islanders by Cook and Ellis. 

 The one describes the burying places as containing many 

 \vooden images representing their deities, some in huts, 

 others not; and the other tells us that &quot; each celebrated tii 

 [spirit] was honoured with an image.&quot; That these cele 

 brated spirits were originally the ghosts of deceased chiefs, 

 is implied by the account given of an allied Polynesian race, 

 the New Zealanders. Among these, according to Thom 

 son, the bodies of chiefs, in some cases &quot; interred within 

 the houses where they died,&quot; where they were bewailed by 

 relatives for weeks [a rude temple and a rude worship] , had 

 &quot; rude human images, 20 or 40 feet high,&quot; erected as monu 

 ments to them. Though in neither of these cases are we told 

 by whom such images of deceased men were made, yet since 

 of New Zealand artists the best are found among the priests, 

 as asserted by Thomson, while Angas tells us that the priest 

 is generally the operator in the ceremony of tattooing (lie 

 being supposed to excel in all sorts of carving), the implica 

 tion is that he is the maker of these effigies in the cases of 

 chiefs, if not in other cases. For while it is alleged that the 

 house-posts, rudely representing deceased members of an 

 ordinary family, are made by members of the family, we 



