We now come to the fourth and the last of our groups of instances. It consists of the rites observed by Australian tribes. Amongst these tribes too there is what Dr. Frazer terms "a sacramental eating" of the totem plant or animal. Thus Central Australian black men of the kangaroo totem eat a little kangaroo flesh, as a sacrament (Spencer and Gillen, p. 204 ff.). Now, it is impossible, I think, to {198} dissociate the Australian rite, to separate this fourth group, from the three groups already described. In Australia, as in the other cases, the customs are observed in spring and harvest time, and in harvest time, in Australia as well as elsewhere, there is a solemn and sparing eating of the plant or animal; and, in Dr. Frazer's words, "plainly these spring and harvest customs are based on the same ancient modes of thought, and form part of the same primitive heathendom." What, then, is this ancient and primitive mode of thought? In all the cases except the Australian, the thought manifestly implied and expressed is that by the solemn eating of the plant or the animal, or the dough image or paste idol, or the little loaves, the community enters into communion with its god, or renews communion with him. On this occasion the Peruvians prayed for children, happy years and abundance. On this occasion, even among the Australians, the Euahlayi tribe pray for long life, because they have kept Byamee's law. It would not, therefore, be unreasonable to interpret the Australian custom by the same ancient mode of thought which explains the custom wherever else--and that is all over the world--it is found. But perhaps, if we can find some other interpretation {199} of the Australian custom, we should do better to reverse the process and explain the spring and harvest customs which are found elsewhere by means of, and in accordance with, the Australian custom. Now another interpretation of the Australian custom has been put forward by Dr. Frazer. He treats the Australian ceremony as being a piece of pure magic, the purpose of which is to promote the growth and increase of the plants and animals which provide the black fellows with food. But if we start from this point of view, we must go further and say that amongst other peoples than the Australian the killing of the representative animal of the spirit of vegetation is, in Dr. Frazer's words, "a magical rite intended to assure the revival of nature in spring." And if that is the nature of the rite which appears in northern Europe as the harvest supper, it will also be the nature of the rite as it appears both in our second group of instances, where the corn is eaten "as the body of the corn-spirit," and in the first group, where the dough image or paste idol was eaten in Mexico as the flesh and bones of the god. That this line of thought runs through Dr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_, in its second edition, is indicated by the fact that the rite is spoken of throughout as a {200} sacrament.