At all events I have shown that among the Negroes on the northern shore of the Gulf of Guinea, among the Bantu about the Lower Congo, and among the Indians of the Thompson River in British Columbia, the fear is seriously entertained that the deceased will seek a renewal of conjugal intercourse, and the utmost precautions are taken to prevent it. The precautions taken by the Baronga (also a Bantu tribe) in South-East Africa, and by some Melanesian peoples of the Torres Straits Islands and the mainland of New Guinea, strongly suggest the same fear. The ancient inhabitants of Hispaniola attributed sexual desires to the dead, though they do not seem to have believed in the possibility of their accomplishment; and the Tarahumare husband or wife is afraid to marry again until the deceased spouse has been finally driven away from the society of the living to herd with the other dead at the end of the world. It is very striking that the populations of areas so widely different in race and culture, as well as so far apart in space, as some of these, should display the identical terror exhibited in the tales and superstitions cited from ancient and modern Europe and from China. The story of the generation of Harpocrates, though related of a god, points to similar ideas in ancient Egypt; and it has its analogues in India and the East Indian Archipelago. Practices exist, moreover, in other countries that seem to bear witness to the same terror, though the terror itself is not recorded. In such cases they may be indirect evidence of its existence. The practices I refer to are such as that among the Kikuyu and Anyanja in East-Central {221} Africa. The former are a tribe Bantu in speech and mainly Bantu in blood and custom, though mingled with other elements. On the third day after the burial of a husband the elders assemble at the village to kill a ram. This ceremony has the effect of cleansing the village at large “from the stain of death”; but something more is needed by the widow. Accordingly “the elders bring with them one of their number who is very poor, and of the same clan as the deceased, and he has to sleep in the hut of the senior widow of the deceased,” and to have sexual relations with her. His poverty, and the rule that “he generally lives on in the village and is looked upon as a stepfather to the children,” point to the service he thus performs being considered attended with some danger, and therefore not to be undertaken except in hope of an adequate reward.[221.1] The Anyanja, likewise a Bantu tribe, settled at the southern end of Lake Nyasa, hold a beer-drinking accompanied by dance and song a month after the burial, which takes place two or three days after the death. Up to that time conjugal relations are forbidden throughout the village of the deceased. The widow or widower and then each relative in turn is shaved, and cohabitation by all except the widow is resumed. She must