fine comb, which merely pricks the skin and draws from it a little serum
slightly tinged with blood, but also by an instrument of the nature of a
chisel, which at every application makes an incision into the flesh,
and causes the blood to start forth in gushes. This chisel is sometimes
nearly a quarter of an inch broad, although, for the more minute parts
of the figure, a smaller instrument is used.

The stick with which the chisel is struck is occasionally formed into a
broad blade at one end, which is applied to wipe away the blood. The
tincture is said to be sometimes obtained from the juice of a particular
tree.

Rutherford has forgotten to mention that, before the cutting has begun
the figure is traced out upon the place; this appears to be always done
in New Zealand as well as elsewhere, a piece of burnt stick or red earth
being, according to Savage,[V] used for the purpose.

Some are tattooed at eight or ten years of age; but a young man is
accounted very effeminate who reaches his twentieth year without having
undergone the operation. Marsden told one of the chiefs, King George, as
he was called, that he must not tattoo his nephew Racow,[W] who was a
very fine-looking youth, with a dignified, open, and placid countenance,
remarking that it would quite disfigure his face; "but he laughed at my
advice," says Marsden, "and said he must be tattooed, as it would give
him a noble, masculine, and warlike appearance; that he would not be fit
for his successor with a smooth face; the New Zealanders would look on
him merely as a woman if he was not tattooed."

Savage says that a small spiral figure on each side of the chin, a
semi-circular figure over each eyebrow, and two, or sometimes three,