a row, and one leaf is laid apart. Cakes, cooked fowl's flesh, toddy and arrack (liquor) are placed on the leaves in small leaf-cups. The assembled agnates then say "We have done everything as we should do, and so our ancestors who have died must take the man who is now dead to their regions. I put the leaf which is apart in the same row with the sixteen leaves." "Once a year, in the month of Mituna (June-July), the Gaudas perform a ceremony for the propitiation of all deceased ancestors. They have a special preference for Venkataramaswami, to whom they make money offerings once a year in September. They employ Brahmins to give them sacred water when they are under pollution, but they do not seek their services for ordinary ceremonies. They are, for the most part, farmers, but some few are labourers. The latter receive three or four seers of paddy a day as wages. Their house language is Tulu in some places, and Canarese in others, but all follow the ordinary system of inheritance, and not the custom of descent through females. Their title is Gauda." As bearing on the superstitious beliefs of the people of South Canara, the following case, which was tried before the Sessions Judge in 1908, may be cited. A young Gauda girl became pregnant by her brother-in-law. After three days' labour, the child was born. The accused, who was the mother of the girl, was the midwife. Finding the delivery very difficult, she sent for a person named Korapulu to come and help her. The child was, as they thought, still-born. On its head was a red protuberance like a ball; round each of its forearms were two or three red bands; the eyes and ears were fixed very high in the head; and the eyes, nose, and mouth were abnormally large. Korapulu and the girl's younger sister at once carried the mother out of the out-house lest the devil child should do her harm or kill her. The accused called for a man named Isuf Saiba, who was standing in the yard outside. He came in, and she asked him to call some of the neighbours, to decide what to do. The child, she said, was a devil child, and must be cut and killed, lest it should devour its mother. While they were looking at the child, it began to move and roll its eyes about, and turn on the ground. It is a belief of the villagers that such a devil child, when born and brought in contact with the air, rapidly grows, and causes great trouble, usually killing the mother, and sometimes killing all the inmates of the house. The accused told Isuf Saiba to cover the child with a vessel, which he did. Then there was a sound from inside the vessel, either of the child moving or making some sound with its mouth. The accused then put her hand under the vessel, dragged the child half way out, and then, while Isuf Saiba pressed the edge of the earthenware vessel on the abdomen of the child, the accused took a knife, and cut the body in half. When the body was cut in two, there was no blood, but a mossy green liquid, or a