It follows, therefore (although even heathen natives do, in rare cases, say of a death, "Yes, Anzam took this one," _i. e._, that he died a natural death), that almost universally at any death which we would know as a natural one, surviving relatives and friends make the charge of witchcraft, and seek the witch or wizard, by investigation involving, in the trial, torture, or ordeal by poison, fire, or other tests. For every natural death at least one, and often ten or more, have been executed under witchcraft accusation. I have pleaded for the lives of accused when I believed them innocent, and whenever I was informed that an investigation was in progress, I said to the crowd assembled in the street, "When you kill these three people to-day, do I see three babies born to take their place in the number of the inhabitants of your village?" The Balengi on the Benita River, among whom I travelled in 1865-70, were then a large tribe. It is now very small, exterminated largely by witchcraft murders for the dead. The aged, defenceless, and slaves are generally selected as victims. But no one is secure. Relatives of a chief who during his life may have seemed envious of his power, are often suspected and put to death. For the determination of a doubtful cause of decease post-mortems are made, but not on any rational basis or with any knowledge of anatomy. In the autopsy of an ordinary person the object is to find among the bowels or other internal organs some sign which the doctor-priest may declare to be the path of the supposed sorcery-injected destroying spirit. In case of a magician, the object is to see whether his own "familiar" had "eaten" him. Cavities in the lungs are considered proof positive that one's own power has destroyed him. The fimbriated extremities of the fallopian tubes of a uterus are also declared to be "witch." Their ciliary motions on dissection are regarded as a sign that the woman was a witch. In proof, the native doctor said to me, "See! those are the spirit-teeth. Don't you see how they move and extend in desire to catch and eat?" It was in vain that I declared to him that if that was true then every woman all over the world was a witch, and that he was bound to go ahead and kill them all; for that God had made no woman without those things. (Was this "doctor's" idea the same reason for which the old anatomists called those fimbriæ "morsus Diaboli"?)