The mode of performing these sacrifices was as follows. Ten or twelve days before the sacrifice the victim’s hair was cut. Crowds assembled to witness the sacrifice. On the day before, the victim was tied to a post and anointed with oil. Great struggles ensued to scrape off some of this oil or to obtain a drop of spittle from the victim. The crowd danced round the post, saying, “O god, we offer this sacrifice for good crops, seasons, and health.” On the day of the sacrifice the legs and arms were first broken, and he was either squeezed to death or strangled. Then the crowd rushed on him with knives and hacked the flesh from the bones. Sometimes he was cut up alive. Another very common mode was to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which revolved on a stout post, and as it whirled round the crowd cut the flesh off while life remained. In some villages as many as fourteen of these wooden elephants were found, all of which had been used for this purpose. In one district the victim was put to death slowly by fire. A low stage was erected, sloping on each side like a roof; upon this the victim was placed, his limbs wound about with cords to prevent his escape. Fires were then lighted and hot brands applied to make him roll up and down the slopes of the stage as much as possible, for the more tears he shed the more abundant would be the supply of rain. The next day the body was cut to pieces. The flesh was at once taken home by delegates of the villages. To secure its rapid arrival it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed with postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles. In each village all who had remained at home fasted until the flesh arrived. When it came it was divided into two portions, one of which was offered to the Earth Goddess by burying it in a hole in the ground. The other portion was divided into as many shares as there were heads of houses present. Each head of a house rolled his share in leaves and buried it in his favourite field. In some places each man carried his portion of flesh to the stream that watered his fields. Since the British Government has suppressed the human sacrifices inferior victims have been substituted, such as goats. Here, then, we have almost before our eyes a change of the victim. A still further change takes place when an image is used as a substitute; and there is again modification when the person captured and destined for sacrifice is allowed to redeem himself with a handsel or a kiss. But the fact that in Europe, aye, and in England, we have these modified customs only now dying out, is an almost sure proof that at a remote period our ancestors practised the awful rites at harvest and in spring, of which a description has been given as still in use in Africa, and as only just put an end to in America and in India. North and west of Launceston is the Petherwin district; the former of these is in Devon, although lying west of the Tamar, as is also Werrington.