Or the offering may be made for the cherishing of the dead in their former home. The simplest and the most common sacrificial act in Melanesia, Bishop Codrington tells us, is that of throwing a small portion of food to the dead. It may be nothing more than a bit of yam or a morsel of betel-nut; it is not for food, but for remembrance and affection. But sometimes it is for actual nourishment. The dead in ancient India who had none to render to them the needful sustenance, wandered as dismal ghosts round their former dwellings, or haunted the cross roads, compelled to feed themselves on the garbage of the streets. The funeral meals, continued at intervals, were celebrated for the purpose of providing the departed with new forms, and converting them into the higher rank of "Fathers." In many lands, from Europe to Japan and Central America, an annual feast for the dead has been maintained in various modes both in classic antiquity and in modern usage; and the ancient practice still survives in strangely altered fashion in the cakes and confectionery carried on All Souls' Day to the graves in the great Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise. Such acts of recognition and fellowship pass through very different stages. They begin with a desire for self-identification with the {140} mysterious power which helps or hurts; as the power is conceived on a greater and more personal scale they turn into tribute and homage. The West African negro passing a big rock or an unusually large tree will add a stone or bit of wood or tuft of grass to the little heap of such trifles at its foot; it is for the Ombwiri, or spirit of the place. After the harvest on the plateau of Lake Tanganyika, pilgrimages are made to the mountain of Fwambo-Liamba; at the top is a sort of altar of small stones, and there scraps of calico, bits of wood, flowers, beads, are laid in honour of a vague "High God" called Lesa. The nature of such gifts may be traced through all gradations of economic advance, just as the mode of conveying it passes through various phases from the coarse to the refined. The pastoral nomad brings the firstling of his flocks; the more advanced agriculturist adds the produce of the ground. The immigrant Hebrew under Canaanite tuition adopted the festivals of harvest and vintage, and with firstlings and tithes wrought his husbandry into his religion when he went to the sanctuary "to see Yahweh's face." The daily sacrifice in the great temple of Marduk at Babylon under Nebuchadrezzar was an epitome of the whole tillage of the land; the choicest fruits, the finest produce of the meadow, honey, cream, oil, wine of different vintages, must be served. In the early ritual of an Egyptian temple, when the daily toilet of the god had {141} been performed and he had been duly robed, painted, and oiled, his table was spread with bread, goose, beef, wine, and water, and decorated with the flowers needed to adorn a meal.