90 A MISSION TO VITI. 
which the missionaries Williams and Turner* have 
published some good illustrations. Compared with cer- 
tain remnants of Priapus worship, as found in Indian 
temples, the ‘“‘ Museo segreto” of Naples, and, freed from 
all obscenity, in the obelisks of Egypt, their nature be- 
comes evident. More or less, these monoliths repre- 
sented the generative principle and procreation ; and, if 
the subject admitted of popular treatment, it would not 
be difficult to show that the Polynesian stones, their 
shape, the reverence paid to them, their decoration, and 
the results expected from their worship, are quite in 
accordance with a widely-spread superstition, which as- 
sumed such offensive forms in ancient Rome, and found 
vent in the noblest monuments of which the land of the 
Pharaohs can boast. ‘Turner, after stating that he had 
in his possession several smooth stones from the New 
Hebrides, says that some of the Polynesian stone-gods 
were supposed to cause fecundity in pigs, rain and sun- 
shine. A stone at Mayo, according to, the Earl of 
Roden, was carefully wrapped up in flannel, periodically 
worshipped, and supplicated to send wrecks on the coast. 
Two large stones, lying at the bottom of a moat, are 
said to have given birth to Degei, the supreme god of 
Fiji. In all instances an addition to objects already 
existing was expected from these monoliths. There was 
a stone near Bau, which, whenever a lady of rank at 
the Fijian capital was confined, also gave birth to a little 
stone. It argues nothing that these stony offsprings 
were fraudulently placed there. The ideas floating in 
* Williams’s ‘ Fiji and Fijians,’ p. 220, Turner’s ‘Nineteen Years in 
Polynesia,’ p. 347. 
