piles of old pots, gourds, and pieces of iron.[39] When a hunter starts for the chase, he prays to the Musimo to give him good luck. If he kills any big game, he places before the hut of his Musimo the head of the beast he has killed, and inside a little of the flesh."[40] 2. Just as worship is an eminent part of religion, prayer is usually a chief part of religious worship. But in fetichism, though it undeniably has a part, it is not prominent, and not often formal or public. It plays a less obvious and less frequent part than either sacrifices or the use of charms. "Prayer is the ordinary concomitant of sacrifice; the worshipper explains the reason of the gift, and urges the deity to accept it and to grant the help that is needed. The prayers of the earliest stage are offered on emergencies, and often appear to be intended to attract the attention of the god who may be engaged in another direction. The requests they contain are of the most primary sort. Food is asked for, success in hunting or fishing, strength of arm, rain, a good harvest, children, and so forth. They have a ring of urgency; they state the claims the worshipper has on the god, and mention his former offerings as well as the present one; they praise the power and the past acts of the deity, and adjure him by his whole relationship to his people (and also to his enemies) to grant their requests."[41] Fetich prayer may be and is offered without restriction by any one, young or old, male or female; but to my knowledge it is seldom used by the young. A very intelligent woman, a member of my Batanga church, tells me that when she was a child she possessed a fetich supposed to be very valuable, which she had inherited from her father. She says that when she would be going into the forest or where she expected difficulty or danger or trouble or was anxious for success, she would hold the fetich in her hand, and with eye and thought directed toward it and the spirit it was supposed to contain, would utter a short petition for aid and protection. But practically formal prayer is rarely made. Ejaculatory prayer, however, is made constantly, in the uttering of cabalistic words, phrases, or sentences adopted by or assigned to almost every one by parent or doctor. They are uttered by all ages and both sexes at any time, as a defence from evil, on all sorts of occasions,--_e. g._, when one sneezes, stumbles, or is otherwise startled, etc. The prayers which I have heard were of adults. On a journey, about 1876, stopping for a night in a village on the Ogowe River, I saw the venerable chief stand out in the open street. He addressed the spirits of the air, begging them, "Come not to my town!" He recounted his good deeds--praising himself as just, honest, and kind to his neighbors--as reason why no evil should befall him, and closed with an impassioned appeal to the spirits to stay away.