There are certain words in Latin bearing the sense of purification, which are older, if I am not mistaken, than _lustrare_ and _lustratio_, and which belong, I should be inclined to believe, to a ‘pre-animistic’ period: to a period, that is, when the thing to be got rid of by what we call purification was not so much evil influences in the form of spirits as some mysterious miasmatic contamination. These words are _februum_, _februare_, _februatio_, from which the name of our second month, the month of purification, is derived. _Februum_ is a material object with magical purifying power, which the late Romans might call _piamen_, or _purgamen_ (Ovid, _Fast._ ii. 19 foll.), using a word belonging to the priestly ritual of the fully developed State. A number of such objects were in use at Rome on particular occasions, all called generically by this name _februum_--water, fire, sulphur, laurel, wool, pine-twigs, cakes made of certain ‘holy’ ingredients, and at the Lupercalia, strips of the skin of a victim. These belong to the region of magic, and are intimately connected with charms and amulets, which were and still are so popular and universal in Italy. They belong to the same category, psychologically considered, as the _bulla_ of children, the _apex_ of the _flamines_, a pointed twig fixed on the head or head-dress, and the _galerus_, the cap of the Flamen Dialis, made of the skin of a white victim which had been sacrificed to Jupiter. These are all survivals from an older stratum of religious thought than the processional rites which we are going to study: they date from a period when magical processes were the rule and religious processes the exception.