Should pot or bowl be let fall, or wooden implement broken, during the feast of Elechu, the sherds must be piled in a heap upon which is flung the body of any animal which should die during the festival. So large had these mounds grown in many cases that they formed a serious menace to the health of the town and proved no inconsiderable difficulty in the way of an official with leanings towards sanitation. It is to a mixture of good fortune on the one hand and reasonableness on the part of the Okrikans that the trouble is now, for practical purposes, a matter of past history. Among Ibibio the burial of women dying in childbirth is also forbidden. These were borne forth, through a hole purposely broken in the house wall, to be flung away in the bush, lest their barrenness might have ill effect upon the fruitfulness of the Earth Mother. VI IBUDU To those who pass through the country with open eyes it is obvious that the phallic cult is very strong among Ibo. Where the Ibibio had contented themselves with a plain mud pillar, set as emblem amid the farm, Ibo take special pains in modelling not only a personification of the symbol, but in showing unmistakably that the circumcised phallus is intended to be represented. Among Ibo, as with the ancient Egyptians also, the feminine, as well as the male, genital organs are worshipped. Both are rudely depicted under the title Ibudu--a name which embraces the chief protective Jujus[15] erected in town or compound, the primary purpose of which appears to be the granting of piccans, though most also act as protector in general to the family or village of which they are the fetish, and bestow fertility on farm and byre. The feminine part of the Juju is usually in bell shape, instead of the pot or calabash form found among Ekoi and Ibibio. It generally shows the high coiffure only permitted to Ibo women after the birth of a babe. The nose is often joined to the base of the hair ridge and the impaled tortoise, already explained as a feminine symbol, is as a rule seen in the foreground. Perhaps the most convincing testimony to the efficacy attributed to the feminine genital organ is a carefully carved representation of the labia, which was explained as having been one of the most sacred objects in a great Andoni Juju house, whence it was taken by a man who had no idea of its significance. In course of time it came to my notice and was subsequently added to our collection. An example of the simplest form of phallic pillar may be found in a compound next door to that of Ababua, head chief of Omo Chuku. Save for two roughly modelled feet at the base, no attempt was made to add limbs to the column, down either side of which a row of rough wooden pegs had been driven. It was explained that each man of the compound inserted one of these on taking a wife, so that the Juju might have a constant reminder of the need to send ‘plenty of piccans’ to their hearth.