The marks of the burns were distinctly visible on the man when I saw him....' The evidence is what the Society for Psychical Research calls 'remote.' In 1878 the event was already 'long ago.' The testimony is from we know not how remote a hand. The black sufferer, as a baby at the time, could not remember the facts. The stock-keepers who were present are not named, nor do we even know whether Mr. Davis was informed by them, or heard their story at third or fourth hand. We do not know whether they correctly interpreted the alleged sacrifice, in a religious ceremony (by a people said to be almost or quite irreligious), of all the first-born children of women. Mr. Frazer has circulated inquiries as to Australian customs, and has published the results in the 'Journal of the Anthropological Institute.'[21] He does not appeal to the answers in corroboration of Mr. Davis's remarkable story.[22] Imbued with the superstition of psychical research, I once investigated the famous Australian tale of Fisher's ghost (1826). I sent for the Court archives (the ghost led to a trial for murder), and I received these and a contemporary plan of the scene of the murder and the apparition. These documents left me doubtful about the ghost of Fisher.[23] May I not say that similar researches and good corroborative evidence are needed before we accept a settler's tale of an Australian _sacrifice_, 'long ago,' as confirming a theory of a Hebrew _yearly massacre_ of all the first-born? Moreover, if Mr. Moore's evidence is good as to a sacrifice, why is the latest evidence of Mr. Howitt and all my other witnesses as to Australian religion not worth mentioning? Why is it so bad that Mr. Frazer goes back to Mr. Howitt's evidence of 1881, before he knew the secret, and is silent about Mr. Howitt's evidence of 1885? We may quote Sir Alfred Lyall: 'One effect of the accumulation of materials has been to encourage speculative generalisations, because it has provided a repertory out of which one may make arbitrary selection of examples and precedents to suit any theory.' Has Mr. Frazer escaped this error? I cannot think that he has escaped, and the error is fatal. He cites Mr. Howitt, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Oldfield, Mr. Dawson, and Mr. Cameron (whom I am about to quote), all of whom speak to a native religion of the kind for which I contend. Their witness is enough for him in other matters, but as to this matter these witnesses, for some reason, are absolutely ignored. I myself have omitted the affirmative evidence of Mr. Oldfield and Mr. Foelsche as to religion, because I think it contaminated, although in part corroborated. But my witnesses, all cited for other points by Mr. Frazer, are not even mentioned on the point where, if their reports be correct, they seem rather to invalidate his central theory--that religion was invented in the despair of magic.