In Schmidt’s _Jahrbücher der gesammten Medicin_, 1890, Bd. 226, p. 175, there is an abstract of an article on Samoa by P. Burzen in which, among other things, the three Egyptian operations of circumcision, massage and mummification are described as being practiced. The embalming is done by women. After removing the viscera, which are buried or burnt, the eviscerated corpse is then soaked for two months in coconut oil, mixed with vegetable juices. When the body is fully treated and no more fluid escapes from it, the hair which had previously been cut off, is stuck on again with a resinous paste. The body cavity is packed with cloth soaked in vegetable oil and resinous materials: then the mummy is wrapped up with bandages, the head and hands being left exposed. The body so prepared is put in a special place where it is preserved indefinitely. “In Pitcairn Island 1,400 miles due west of Easter Island carved stone pillars or images of a somewhat similar character to those of Easter Island” are found (Enoch, =16=, p. 274). “Another 1,400 miles to the north-west takes us to Tahiti. The natives of Tahiti buried their chiefs in temples; their embalmed bodies, after being exposed, were interred in a couching position. Mention is made of a pyramidal stone structure, on which were the actual altars, which stood at the farther end of one of the squares.” “There are many close analogies between the sacrificial practices and those of Mexico” (p. 275). In their extensive migrations the carriers of the “heliolithic” culture took with them the custom of circumcision, and introduced it into most of the regions where their influence spread. In some of the areas affected by the “heliolithic” leaven the more primitive operation of “incision” is found. This consists not of removing the prepuce, but merely slitting up its dorsal aspect (=69=, p. 432). It was the method employed in Egypt in pre-dynastic times, when it was the custom to hide the phallus in a leather sheath suspended from a rope tied round the body. The practice of “incision” and the use of the pudendal sheath persists in some parts of Africa until the present day (see _Journ. Roy. Anthropol. Instit._ 1913, p. 120). Rivers claims that “the practice of incision arose in Oceania as a modification of circumcision” (=69=, p. 436): but I think the possibility of it having been introduced from the west along with or before the practice of circumcision needs to be considered.