few that guarded the remnants left of the buffalo, which were taken, and burnt with ceremony at the foot of the stake." I pass on to the subject of infanticide among the Kondhs. It is stated, in the Manual of the Vizagapatam district, that female infanticide used to be very common all over the Jeypore country, and the Rajah is said to have made money out of it in one large taluk (division). The custom was to consult the Dasari (priest) when a child was born as to its fate. If it was to be killed, the parents had to pay the Amin of the taluk a fee for the privilege of killing it; and the Amin used to pay the Rajah three hundred rupees a year for renting the privilege of giving the license and pocketing the fees. The practice of female infanticide was formerly very prevalent among the Kondhs of Ganjam, and, in 1841, Lieutenant Macpherson was deputed to carry into effect the measures which had been proposed by Lord Elphinstone for the suppression of the Meriah sacrifices and infanticide. The custom was ascribed to various beliefs, viz., (1) that it was an injunction by god, as one woman made the whole world suffer; (2) that it conduces to male offspring; (3) that woman, being a mischief-maker, is better out of the world than in it; (4) that the difficulty, owing to poverty, in providing marriage portions was an objection to rearing females. From Macpherson's well known report [170] the following extracts are taken. "The portion of the Khond country, in which the practice of female infanticide is known to prevail, is roughly estimated at 2,400 square miles, its population at 60,000, and the number of infants destroyed annually at 1,200 to 1,500. The tribes (who practice infanticide) belong to the division of the Khond people which does not offer human sacrifices. The usage of infanticide has existed amongst them from time immemorial. It owes its origin and its maintenance partly to religious opinions, partly to ideas from which certain very important features of Khond manners arise. The Khonds believe that the supreme deity, the sun god, created all things good; that the earth goddess introduced evil into the world; and that these two powers have since conflicted. The non-sacrificing tribes make the supreme deity the great object of their adoration, neglecting the earth goddess. The sacrificing tribes, on the other hand, believe the propitiation of the latter power to be the most necessary worship. Now the tribes which practice female infanticide hold that the sun god, in contemplating the deplorable effects produced by the creation of feminine nature, charged men to bring up only as many females as they could restrain from producing evil to society. This is the first idea upon which the usage is founded. Again, the Khonds believe that souls almost invariably return to animate human forms in the families in which they have been first born and received. But the reception of the soul of an infant into a family is completed only