Now, it is, I venture to suggest, impossible to dissociate from the first-fruits ceremonials which I have described the ceremonies observed by Australian black fellows on similar occasions. And it is also impossible to overlook the differences between the ceremony in Australia and the ceremony elsewhere. In Australia, as elsewhere, when the time of year arrives at which the food becomes fit for eating, {184} a ceremony has to be performed before custom permits the food to be eaten freely. In Australia, as elsewhere, a ceremonial eating, a sacramental meal, has to take place. But whereas elsewhere the god of the community is expressly invited to partake of the sacramental meal, even though he be not mentioned by name and though the invitation take the curt form of "This is yours to eat," in Australia no words whatever are spoken; the person who performs the ceremony performs it indeed with every indication of reverential feeling, he eats solemnly and sparingly, that is to say formally and because the eating is a matter of ritual, but no reference is made by him so far as we know, to any god. How then are we to explain the absence of any such reference? There seems to me to be only one explanation which is reasonably possible. It is that in the Australian ceremony, which would be perfectly intelligible and perfectly in line with the ceremony as it occurs everywhere else, the reference to the god who is or was invited to partake of the first-fruits has in the process of time and, we must add, in the course of religious decay, gradually dropped out. The invitation may never have been more ample than the curt form, "This is yours to eat." Even in the {185} absence of any verbal invitation whatever, a gesture may long have sufficed to indicate what was in the mind and was implied by the act of the savage performing the ceremony. Words may not have been felt necessary to explain what every person present at the ceremony knew to be the purpose of the rite. But in the absence of any verbal formula whatever the purpose and meaning of the rite would be apt to pass out of mind, to evaporate, even though custom maintained, as it does in Australia to this day maintain, the punctual and punctilious performance of the outward ceremony. I suggest, therefore, that in Australia, as elsewhere, the solemn eating of the first-fruits has been a sacramental meal of which both the god and his worshippers were partakers. The alternative is to my mind much less probable: it is to use the Australian ceremony as it now exists to explain the origin of the ceremony as we find it elsewhere. In Australia it is not now apparently associated with the worship of any god; therefore it may be argued in other countries also it was not originally part of the worship of any god either. If, then, it was not an act of public worship originally, how are we to understand it? The suggestion is that the fruits of the earth or the animals which become