26 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
ning there was darkness, Hangi, the heavens, lying close to kopapa, the 
earth. Then Hangi-tokano, one of the offspring of Rangi and Kopapa, sung 
a powerful incantation song, which caused Rangi, the heavens, to rise above 
the earth, and thereupon light appeared upon the earth.. Then Iangi- 
tokano made man out of the earth, and called him Te-ao-marama, and from 
him are descended all the people of the world, Rangi, the heavens, some- 
times visits his wife, Kopapa, such visits being followed by copious dews. 
The Mori-oris do not appear to have had any religious feeling in the 
ordinary acceptation of the term, although they believed in good and evil 
spirits, both of whom were known by the common name of Atua. They were 
very superstitious ; and old and young alike were in tho habit, it appears, 
of telling ghost stories as wild and wonderful as the story of the Cock 
Lane Ghost. Indeed, they believed that, after death, the spirit of the 
departed had power to return to earth and haunt the living, and that 
a person visited by the kiko kiko (or evil spirit of the dead), and touched 
on the head by it, would die very soon after such visitation. To prevent 
the dead from troubling them, they had a curious custom. As soon as 
breath had left the body, they would all assemble at midnight in some 
secluded spot, and proceed to kill the kiko kiko. First kindling a large 
fire, they would sit round in a circle, each person holding a long rod in his 
hand; to the end of each rod a tuft of spear grass was tied; they would 
night in a certain place to kill the kiko kiko, he arrayed himself in a white 
sheet and night-cap, whitened his face, and made himself appear as un- 
earthly as possible, and, going stealthily to the place whilst the ceremony 
Was proceeding, he suddenly appeared before them. With one simultaneous 
yell they cleared the course, and fled to their huts as if a legion of devils 
were at their heels. In the morning, their miserable, woe-begone faces 
plainly indicated a sleepless night, and the horrid kiko kiko was the talk 
amongst them for many months. This experiment, however, succeeded 
when they had become more humanized and enlightened, they were told 
who the kiko kiko of that occasion really was, Upon this they looked 
kiko kiko. It was by no means an unusual thing for a person to affirm 
that he or she had been visited by the kiko kiko; in which case, at the 
