There is no evidence in the older Shinto records of the use of incense or of burnt-offerings, nor is any special importance attached to the blood of slaughtered animals. White being considered an auspicious colour, white animals were frequently selected for sacrifice. At the present time the daily offerings made to the Sun-Goddess and the Food-Goddess at Ise consist of four cups of _sake_, sixteen saucers of rice and four of salt, besides fish, birds, fruits, seaweed, and vegetables. The annual offerings at the tomb of the first Mikado, Jimmu, are products of mountain, river, and sea, including _tahi_ (a fish), carp, edible sea-weed, salt, water, _sake_, _mochi_ (rice-cake), fern-flour, pheasants, and wild ducks. [Illustration] _Clothing_.--The clothing of the ancient Japanese consisted of hemp, _yuju_ (a fibre made of the inner bark of the paper mulberry), and silk. All these materials are represented in the Shinto offerings enumerated in the _Yengishiki_. Silk, however, was at this time still somewhat of a novelty, and, therefore, religion being conservative, it takes a less conspicuous place. But hemp and bark-fibre, with the textiles woven from them, are very common offerings. They were more convenient than perishable articles of food for sending to shrines at a distance from the capital, and as cloth was the currency of the day, it was a convenient substitute for unprocurable or objectionable articles. In the _Yengishiki_ so many ounces of fibre or so many pieces of cloth are prescribed, but at a later period a more specialized and conventional form, called _oho-nusa_ (great-offering), came into use. The _oho-nusa_ (p. 214) consists of two wands placed side by side, from the ends of which depend a quantity of hempen fibre and a number of strips of paper.[181] One of the wands is of the _cleyera japonica_, or evergreen sacred tree. The other is a bamboo of a particular species. Their use is connected with an old Japanese rule of etiquette that presents to a superior should be delivered attached to a branch of a tree, the object being doubtless to mark a respectful aloofness of the giver from the receiver. The paper slips represent the _yufu_, or mulberry-bark fibre. The use of _yufu_ for clothing having become more or less obsolete, owing to the introduction of cotton, paper, which in Japan is made of the same material, was substituted for it. The _oho-nusa_ are still employed on important occasions, but for general use they are now replaced by the well-known _gohei_ (p. 215), in which the hemp and one of the wands are omitted. Another form of _nusa_, called _ko-nusa_ (little _nusa_) or _kiri-nusa_ (cut-_nusa_), consists of paper with leaves of the sacred tree chopped up and mixed with rice. Travellers in ancient times carried this mixture with them in a bag and made offerings of it to the phallic deities along their way. It was also used when in danger of shipwreck. The same