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His text was that the Hurons did not burn fish bones. "Then
enlarging on this theme with extraordinary unction, he exhorted and
conjured and invited and implored the fish to come and be caught and
to be of good courage and to fear nothing, for it was all to serve
their friends who honoured them and did not burn their bones." The
natives of the Duke of York Island annually decorate a canoe with
flowers and ferns, lade it, or are supposed to lade it, with
shell-money, and set it adrift to compensate the fish for their
fellows who have been caught and eaten. It is especially necessary
to treat the first fish caught with consideration in order to
conciliate the rest of the fish, whose conduct may be supposed to be
influenced by the reception given to those of their kind which were
the first to be taken. Accordingly the Maoris always put back into
the sea the first fish caught, "with a prayer that it may tempt
other fish to come and be caught."
Still more stringent are the precautions taken when the fish are the
first of the season.


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