As soon as the child is born, a signal is given either by beating a bamboo with a stick or by striking a brass gong to announce the event. Then a fowl is waved over the heads of all present, including the infant and his mother. The fowl is killed and the blood smeared on the foreheads of those present. It is afterwards cooked and eaten by the parents of the child and any friends that may be present. The mother has a poultice of ground ginger placed on her abdomen, and is bandaged and made to sit up with her back to the fire, and she is given an unlimited amount of ginger-tea to drink. Her poultice is changed once a day. The infant is washed, and a compound of betel-nut and pepper leaf, which has been chewed in the mouth, is placed on its stomach, and a binder tied round it. It is then made to lie on the spathe of a betel-nut palm, a cloth is put round it, and a Dyak sheet hung over it. Until a civilized Government interfered to prevent such atrocious murders, there used to be a custom among the Dyaks that, if the mother died in giving birth to her child, the babe should pay the penalty and be buried with the mother. The reasons given by them for this cruel act being, that it was the cause of the mother’s death, and that there was no one to nurse and care for it. No woman would dare to suckle such an orphan, lest it should bring misfortune upon her own children. Therefore the poor child was very often placed alive in the coffin with the dead mother, and both were buried together. This was the old Dyak custom, but it is a long time since it has been carried out. I have myself known many cases among the Dyaks when, the mother having died in child-birth, the orphan has been adopted and brought up by some friend or relative. During the first three days the child receives its bath in a wooden vessel in the house, but on the fourth day it is taken to the river. Some ceremonies attend its first bath in the river. An old man of some standing, who has been successful in all he has undertaken, is asked to bathe the child. He wades into the river holding the child in his arms. A fowl is killed on the bank, a wing is cut off, and if the child be a boy, this wing is stuck upon a spear, and if a girl, it is fixed to the shuttle used to pass between the threads in weaving, and this is erected on the bank, and the blood allowed to drop into the stream as an offering to propitiate the spirits supposed to inhabit the waters, and to insure that, at any rate, no accident by water shall happen to the child. The remainder of the fowl is taken back to the house, cooked and eaten.