But the worst of all omens is to find anywhere on the farm the dead body of any animal, especially if it be that of any animal included in the omen list. It infuses a deadly poison into the whole crop, and one or other of the owner’s family will certainly die within the year. When such a terrible thing happens, the omen is tested by killing a pig, and divining from the appearance of its liver directly after death. If the liver be pronounced to be of good omen, then all is well, but if not, then all the rice grown on that ground must be sold or given away. Other people may eat it, for the omen affects only those who own the crops. A way of escaping from the bad effects of omens is sometimes resorted to. Certain men, who by some peculiar magic influence are credited with possessing in themselves some occult power which can overcome bad omens, are able by eating some little thing of the produce of the farm to turn away the evil prognostication and render it ineffectual. Something grown on the farm—a little Indian corn or a few cucumber-shoots—is taken to the man. For a small consideration he eats it raw. By this means he appropriates to himself the evil omen, which can do him no harm, and thus delivers the owner of the farm from any possible evil in the future. The Dyak pays heed to these ominous creatures not only in his farming, but in all his journeyings and in any kind of work he may be engaged in. If he be going to visit a friend, the cry of a bird of ill omen will send him back. If he be engaged in carrying beams from the jungle for his house, and hear a _kutok_, or _bejampong_, or an _embuas_, he will at once throw down the piece of timber, and it will be left there for a day or two, or perhaps abandoned altogether. If at night the inhabitants of a long Dyak house hear an owl make a peculiar noise called _sabut_, they will all hastily leave the house in the early morning, and remain away, living in temporary sheds, for some weeks, and return to the house only when they hear a _nendak_ or _beragai_ cry on their left. There are many omens which make a place unfit for habitation—for example, a _beragai_ flying over the house or an armadillo crawling up into it. So great is the Dyak belief in omens that a man will sometimes abandon a nearly finished boat simply because a bird of ill omen flies across its bows. The labour of weeks will thus be wasted. I have myself seen wooden beams and posts left half finished in the jungle, and have learned on inquiry that some bird of ill omen was heard while the man was at work on them, and so they had to be abandoned.