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POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
come into the place of public worship, with a little babe 
in her arms, often gazing, with evident tenderness and 
delight, on its smiling countenance. Sometimes a 
mother has been seen conducting her child to school, or 
applying for a book at our dwelling ; and, occasionally, 
we have beheld a mother reading and explaining the 
scriptures to her children, or joining with them in prayer 
to the Most High. These changes of feeling and practice 
have taken place, not by a gradual process during 
successive generations, but among the same people, and 
in regard to the same individuals, who were subject to 
all the cruel insensibility, and addicted to all the bar¬ 
barities, of infant murder. 
In the treatment of those children formerly spared, 
a number of singular customs were observed, and 
several ceremonies performed. The mother bathed in 
the sea immediately after a profuse perspiration had 
been induced, and the infant was taken to the water 
almost as soon as it entered the world. It was also 
taken to the marea, where a variety of ceremonies were 
celebrated. In some of the islands, a number of these 
were attended to before its birth. When the mother 
repaired to the temple, the priest, after presenting the 
costly and numerous offerings, caught the god in a 
kind of snare, or loop made with human hair, and also 
offered up his prayer that the child might be an honour 
to his family, a benefit to the nation, and be more 
famous than any of his ancestors had been. This 
ceremony prevailed in the Hervey Islands. A number 
of amoa were performed in the Society Islands, which 
were a kind of religious ceremony, referring as much 
to the relatives as to the child. If it was of high 
rank, the inhabitants of the district were prohibited 
