Travers.—On the Lake Districts of Province of Auckland. 7 
Mr. Tylor's elaborate and instructive work, entitled ** Researches into the 
Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization :"— 
* Hanging and burning in effigy is a proceeding which, in civilised 
countries at any rate, at last comes fairly out into pure symbolism. The 
idea that the burning of the straw and rag body should act upon the body 
of the original, perhaps hardly comes into the mind of any one who assists 
at such a performance. But it is not easy to determine how far this is the 
case with the New Zealanders, whose minds are full of confusion between 
object and image, as we may see by their witchcraft, and who also hold 
strong views about their effigies, and ferociously revenge an insult to them. 
One very curious practice has come out of their train of thought about this 
matter. They were very fond of wearing round their necks little hideous . 
figures of green jade, with their heads very much on one side, which are 
called tiki, and are often to be seen in museums. It seems likely that they 
are merely images of Tiki, the god of the dead. They are carried as 
memorials of dead friends, and are sometimes taken off and wept and sung 
over by a circle of natives ; but a tiki commonly belongs, not to the memory 
of a single individual, but of a succession of deceased persons who have 
worn it in their time, so that it cannot be considered as having in it much 
of the nature of a portrait.* Some New Zealanders, however, who were 
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 contingency the tikis were made with only 
three fingers, so that, not being any one’s image, no one was bound to 
notice what happened to them." 
Although I have asked many Maoris the reason why the number of 
fingers in the figures is limited to three, I never received the explanation 
given in Mr. Tylor's book, which, however, a perusal of that work leads 
me to believe to be à correct one. 
I have requested Captain Mair and Mr. Hamlin (the Resident Magis- 
irate at Maketu) to endeavour to acquire these figures, with a view of having 
them placed in the Wellington Museum, and I have some hopes that this 
may be done. In other respects, the carvings which I examined there are 
not very high even in the scale of Maori art. 
About a mile from Ohinemutu are the baths of Sulphur Point, to which 
numbers of persons resort for curative purposes. They appear to be 
effectual in various forms of cutaneous diseases, and to have given relief 
even in rheumatic affections. The surface of the ground, over a very large 
Hale, in U. S. Exploring Exp.; Philadelphia, vol. vi., 1846, p. 23. Rev. W. Yate, 
** Account of New Zealand” London, 1835, p. 151 
