As the spring festival in honour of the “Sea God” comes at the time of the vernal equinox, coinciding approximately with the Christian Easter, the great silver helmets of the Yami can but remind one of the Easter hats of more civilized lands. And now that the fact is generally accepted by students of comparative religion and folk-lore that “Easter” is a pre-Christian festival--common to many lands and races, only, at the present time in the Western world, given an Anno Domini interpretation, as is the case with Christmas and the other festivals of the Church--it is perhaps justifiable to wonder whether the custom of donning gala attire at Easter may not have a very ancient origin, as many centuries pre-Christian as the festival itself in celebration of the awakening of the earth to renewed life. With the Yami--the Botel Tobago folk--the New Year is reckoned from the great spring festival. Most of the tribes on the main island of Formosa count the New Year as beginning at the time of the harvest festival in the autumn. Before leaving the subject of RELIGION as this is counted among the aborigines, it may be mentioned that the seventeenth-century Dutch writers--Father Candidius and others--speak of numerous temples--“one to every sixteen houses”--as existing among the aborigines. They do not mention which tribe, or tribes, had these temples, but the context would seem to imply the Paiwan, or perhaps the Ami. While these temples doubtless existed at the time that the Dutch Fathers wrote, they no longer do so. The nearest approach to a temple is the house of chief or priestess, especially among the Paiwan, where such carvings as have been described are found. These carved tablets perhaps represent a system of temples and temple-worship which once existed. FOOTNOTES: [64] A tribal group, or unit, usually consists of several villages near together, under the same rulership, and having the same organization and regulations. [65] See map. [66] Sometimes called the Story of Kaguya-Hime. [67] See illustration. [68] See illustration, p. 116. [69] See p. 115. [70] See p. 118. [71] See map. [72] The word “nation” is here used in the sense that it is commonly used in connection with the tribal groupings of the American Indians. [73] See _Totemism and Exogamy_ (vol. i), by Sir James Frazer. [74] Even under “conditions of civilization,” however, eugenists hold that more male infants than female are born, but fewer reach maturity. Among primitive peoples the disproportion seems greater; that is, except among those tribes where the women are deliberately fattened--supposedly to enhance their beauty--as is the case with certain of the African tribes; or except among those where polygamy exists, which Frazer suggests may tend to increase the proportion of females (see _Totemism and Exogamy_, vol. i.).