exactly a case for a test, and that which was given would have been good enough for spiritualists, though not for more reasonable human beings.  In the village hall, in flickering firelight, the friends, with the English observer, the ’Pakeha Maori,’ were collected.  The medium, by way of a ‘cabinet,’ selected the darkest corner.  The fire burned down to a red glow.  Suddenly the spirit spoke, ‘Salutation to my tribe,’ and the chief’s sister, a beautiful girl, rushed, with open arms, into the darkness; she was seized and held by her friends.  The gloom, the tears, the sorrow, nearly overcame the incredulity of the Englishman, as the Voice came, ’a strange, melancholy sound, like the sound of a wind blowing into a hollow vessel’.  ‘It is well with me,’ it said; ’my place is a good place.’  They asked of their dead friends; the hollow answers replied, and the Englishman ‘felt a strange swelling of the chest’.  The Voice spoke again:  ‘Give my large pig to the priest,’ and the sceptic was disenchanted.  He now thought of the test. ’"We cannot find your book,” I said; “where have you concealed it?” The answer immediately came:  “Between the Tahuhu of my house and the thatch, straight over you as you go into the door".’  Here the brother rushed out.  ’In five minutes he came back, with the book in his hand.’  After one or two more remarks the Voice came, ’"Farewell!” from deep beneath the ground.  “Farewell!” again from high in air.  “Farewell!” once more came moaning through the distant darkness of the night.  The deception was perfect.  “A ventriloquist,” said I, “or—­or, perhaps the devil."’ The seance had an ill end:  the chief’s sister shot herself.

This was decidedly a well-got-up affair for a colonial place.  The Maori oracles are precisely like those of Delphi.  In one case a chief was absent, was inquired for, and the Voice came, ’He will return, yet not return’.  Six months later the chiefs friends went to implore him to come home.  They brought him back a corpse; they had found him dying, and carried away the body.  In another case, when the Maori oracle was consulted as to the issue of a proposed war, it said:  ’A desolate country, a desolate country, a desolate country!’ The chiefs, of course, thought the other country was meant, but they were deceived, as Croesus was by Delphi, when he was told that he ‘would ruin a great empire’.  In yet another case, the Maoris were anxious for the spirits to bring back a European ship, on which a girl had fled with the captain.  The Pakeha Maori was present at this seance, and heard the ’hollow, mysterious whistling Voice, “The ship’s nose I will batter out on the great sea"’.  Even the priest was puzzled, this, he said, was clearly a deceitful spirit, or atua, like those of which Porphyry complains, like most of them in fact.  But, ten days later, the ship came back to port; she had met a gale, and sprung a leak in the bow, called, in Maori, ‘the nose’ (ihu).  It is hardly surprising that some Europeans used to consult the oracle.