In addition to the animal or bird that may constitute the totem there are other animals and birds which they venerate, and will not kill, eat, or touch. The slaying of such creatures is regarded as a crime against the whole of the tribe. The spirits of dead ancestors, relatives, and chiefs are supposed to reside in such birds and animals. The principal bird of local reverence is the _Harahurusei_ (Bird of God), which is the _chapungo_, a large and beautiful bird, quite black except its tail, which is red. The peculiarity of this bird is that it soars overhead exactly as does a bird of prey. The natives assert that the nest, eggs, or feathers of this bird have never been found by anyone, nor do they know on what food it lives. A native will not proceed on a journey if the chapungo appears in the air or settles on the ground in front of him, but will at once return home. Natives hail the bird and ask it for favours. The local natives will not eat the following: Common grey hawk, black crow, owl, wolf, crocodile, snake, or wild dog. Some will not eat hippo or eland flesh. They will not kill the chapungo, owl, wild dog, heron, and certain small birds. But while these are the general practices of local Makalanga tribes, certain families in different tribes frequently have additional and special objects of veneration, and any one native may have some particular object for his own personal veneration. The tribal custom with regard to not partaking of the flesh of certain birds and animals is very strictly adhered to, even though natives starve. To touch such, living or dead, is a defilement, and the remains can only be moved by using sticks. Of insects, they eat locusts, two kinds of cricket (_mashu_ and _zukumge_), a caterpillar (_masonya_), a worm called _mambene_, and different kinds of ants, including _shua_ and _madjuro_, but especially flying-ants. All these insects they consider dainties, and cook them in the soup-pot into which they dip each handful of _rapoka_ porridge. The soup is made of fat, ground monkey-nuts, and many other ingredients. The natives are known to draw certain star-pictures in the sky; for instance, Orion is made out to be “two pigs and a dog.” The three stars in the Belt form one of the principal subjects of children’s songs. They, of course, know the Morning and Evening Star, while the Pleiades in their rising and setting mark the sowing and reaping seasons. They evidently only see six stars in the latter, as they call them _Tshimtanatu_, which means anything containing six. They believe the sun returns across the sky at night when everyone is sleeping, and that it travels from west to east ready to start over again at daybreak, but high up in the expanse of the heavens and hidden from sight by unseen clouds. They ridicule the idea of the earth being round.