A common root-word for fire serves to connect numerous scattered insular races of the great Pacific archipelagos, through their intercourse with the Malay voyagers. Yet while the Malay word _ápi_ may be taken as the source of many diversified forms of the insular term for fire, the Papuans, rather than the Malays, present the ethnical peculiarities predominant throughout Polynesia, and characteristic of the Maoris of New Zealand; and distinct roots in many intermediate island vocabularies prove the independent knowledge of fire. The Vitian is rich in terms for light, warmth, shining, kindling, burning, boiling, etc. _Aundre_, to shine or flame, becomes _oundreva_, to kindle, and _vakaundre_, to cause to burn. From _yame_, the tongue, is made, by a familiar analogy, _yame-ni-mbuka_, a flame of fire. _Ilgatu_, fire, begets a group of words, including _ilgilaiso_, charcoal, and _ilgilaisongawa_, hot cinders. _Liva_, a flash of lightning, gives _lavi_, to bring fire, _lovo_, a furnace, a native oven; and recalls one familiar source of the knowledge of fire: as the _asa_, the sun; _atua_, a deity, probably the sun-god; _asu_, smoke, etc., of the Rotuma dialect suggest another association of ideas common to the Old and New World. The fire-worship of the Ghebirs is but a degraded form of that homage to visible divinity with which man worships the god of day, and bows down before the heavenly host. Among the civilised nations of the New World, accordingly, a peculiar sanctity was associated with the familiar service of fire. At the close of the great cycle of the Aztecs, when the calendar was corrected to true solar time at the end of the fifty-second year, a high religious festival was held, on the eve of which they broke in pieces their household gods, destroyed their furniture, and extinguished every fire. In the reconstruction of the ritual calendar, the intercalated days were held as though non-existent, and dedicated to no gods: on which account they were reputed unfortunate. At the end of that dreary interval of fasting and penitence, during which no hearth smoked, and no warm food could be eaten throughout the land, the ceremony of the new fire was celebrated. After sunset the priests of the great temple went forth to a neighbouring mountain, and there, at midnight, the sacred flame was rekindled, which was to light up the national fires for another cycle. The process by which it was procured, by revolving one piece of dry wood in the hollow of another, is repeatedly illustrated in the Mexican paintings of Lord Kingsborough’s work. But, true to the bloody rites of the national faith, at this sacred festival the fire was kindled on the breast of a human victim, from whence the reeking heart was immediately afterwards torn out, and cast as a bloody offering to the gods. The period from the extinction to the rekindling of the sacred flame was one of great suspense. With a superstitious feeling, in striking accordance with the customs and ideas