“Fonge and Toafa were the names of the two oblong smooth stones which stood on a raised platform of loose stones inland of one of the villages. They were supposed to be the parents of Saato, a god who controlled the rain. When the chiefs and people were ready to go off for weeks to certain places in the bush for the sport of pigeon-catching, offerings of cooked taro and fish were laid on the stones, accompanied by prayers for fine weather and no rain. Any one who refused an offering to the stones was frowned upon; and in the event of rain was blamed and punished for bringing down the wrath of the fine-weather god, and spoiling the sports of the season.” Here, even if one doubts that Saato was a deceased Weather-doctor, and that Fonge and Toafa were his father and mother (which I do not care to insist upon), it is at least clear that we have to deal essentially with two standing stones of precisely the same sort as those which habitually mark sepulture. Of the gods of Hudson’s Island, Mr. Turner gives this very interesting and suggestive account: “Foelangi and Maumau were the principal gods. They had each a temple; and under the altars, on which were laid out in rows the skulls of departed chiefs and people, were suspended offerings of pearl-shell and other valuables. Foelangi had an unchiselled block of stone to represent him--something like a six feet high gravestone.... {098}Offerings of food were taken to the temples, that the gods might first partake before anyone else ate anything.... Husked cocoanuts were laid down, one before each skull.” And of St. Augustine Island he writes: “At the Temple of Maumau there stood a nine feet high coral sandstone slab from the beach.... Meat offerings were laid on the altars, accompanied by songs and dances in honour of the god.” Similarly, about one of the Gilbert Group, Mr. Turner says: “They had other gods and goddesses, and, as was common in this group, had sandstone slabs or pillars set up here and there among the houses. Before these shrines offerings of food were laid during the day, which the priests took away stealthily by night and made the credulous believe that gods and not mortals had done it. If the stone slab represented a _goddess_ it was not placed erect, but laid down on the ground. Being a _lady_ they thought it would be cruel to make her stand so long.” In these cases, and in many others, it seems to me clear that the original gravestone or menhir itself is the object of worship, viewed as the residence of the ghost or god in whose honour it was erected. For in Samoa we know that the grave “was marked by a little heap of stones, a foot or two high,” and at De Peyster’s Island “a stone was raised at the head of the grave, and a human head carved on it”--a first step, as we have already seen, towards the evolution of one form of idol.