Ill Manning's ' Old Neiv Zealand' 349 



on the twenty-ninth day. But at present, as I say, 

 it is regarded as a vulgar custom, ousted by the 

 march of civilisation, like picking your teeth with 

 your fork, which probably owes its extinction quite 

 as much to the introduction of the four -pronged 

 forks, which were bad toothpicks, to the exclusion 

 of the two-pronged ones which were good ones, as 

 to any actual advance in moral ideas. By the way, 

 oddly enough, talking of forks, the only ones known 

 in Fiji, in the old times, were of wood, not unlike a 

 salad fork, and were carefully reserved for the purpose 



of forking up the boiled well, never mind, it 



was not mutton. 



I have never got a more reasonable answer to 

 the question of the ' reason why ' of cannibalism than 

 that given by the Tierra-del-Fuegian to Darwin, who 

 had asked him why, with so many fat dogs about, 

 they ate their old women : — 



' Dog catch otter, old woman no ! ' 



The stories one used to hear of their strange in- 

 volved ways of putting things were infinite, and have 

 beguiled us through many a long evening to early 

 morn. Would that we could tell the dullest of them 

 as well as that grand old Manning used to ! How 

 he, light and active, used to flash and gleam, muscle 

 and brain both in perfection, at an age which will 

 see both of mine at least 'correlated'! — bubbling 

 over at one moment with native wit and acquired 

 learning (and sound learning too !), and the next 



