Mr. Atkinson has lived for twenty years remote from books, and in the company of savage men. He informs me that a friendly Kaneka came to visit him one day, and seemed unusually loth to go. After one affectionate farewell he came back and took another, and then a third, till Mr. Atkinson asked him why he was so demonstrative. The native then replied that this would be their last meeting; that in a day or two he would be dead. As he seemed in perfect health, the Englishman rallied him on his fears. But he very gravely explained that he had met in the woods one whom he took for the girl of his heart. It was not till too late that he recognised the woman for a forest-haunting spirit. To have to do with these is death in three days, and their caresses are mortal. As he said, so it happened, for the unlucky fellow shortly afterwards died. I do not think my informant had ever heard of Le Sieur Nann and the Korrigan, the well-known Breton folk-song of the knight who met the forest fairy, and died in three days. A version of the ballad is printed by De la Villemarque, Barzaz-Breiz (i. 41). Variants exist in Swedish, French, and even in a Lowland Scotch version, sung by children in a kind of dancing game. In this case, what we want to know is whether the Kaneka belief is native, or borrowed from the French. That there really exist fair and deadly women of the woods perhaps the most imaginative student will decline to believe. Among savages men often sicken, and even die, because they consider themselves bewitched, and the luckless Kaneka must have been the victim of a dream or hallucination reacting on the nervous system. But that does not account for the existence of the superstition. The ghosts which at present excite most interest are ghosts beheld at the moment of their owner’s decease by persons at a distance from the scene of death. Thus Baronius relates how “that eximious Platonist, Marsilius Ficinus,” appeared at the hour of his death on a white horse to Michael Mercatus, and rode away, crying “O Michael, Michael, vera, vera sunt illa,” that is, the doctrine of a future life is true. Lord Brougham was similarly favored. Among savages I have not encountered more than one example, and that rather sketchy, of a warning conveyed to a man by a ghost as to the death of a friend. The tale is in FitzRoy’s _Voyage of the ‘Adventurer’ and the ‘Beagle’_ (ii. 118). Jemmy Button was a young Fuegian whom his uncle had sold to the ‘Beagle’ for a few buttons. While at sea, on board the “Beagle,” about the middle of the year 1842, he said one morning to Mr. Byno, that in the night some man came to the side of his hammock, and whispered in his ear that his father was dead. Mr. Byno tried to laugh him out of the idea, but ineffectually. He fully believed that such was the case, and maintained his opinion up to the time of finding his relations in Beagle Channel, when, I regret to say, he found that his father had died some months previously.