Among the Gualala Indians of California, we find the "devil-dance," which Powers compares to the _haberfeldtreiben_ of the Bavarian peasants,--an institution got up for the purpose of frightening the women and children, and keeping them in order. While the ordinary dances are going on, there suddenly stalks forth "an ugly apparition in the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched out at full length along a staff passing behind his neck. Accoutred in this harlequin rig, he dashes at the squaws, capering, dancing, whooping; and they and the children flee for life, keeping several hundred yards between him and themselves." It is believed that, if they were even to touch his stick, their children would die (519. 194). Among the Patwin, Nishinam, and Pomo Indians, somewhat similar practices are in vogue (519. 157, 160, 225). From the golden age of childhood, with its divinities and its demons, we may now pass to the consideration of more special topics concerning the young of the races of men. CHAPTER IX. CHILDREN'S FOOD. Der Mensch ist, was er isst.--_Feuerbach_. For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.--_Coleridge_. Man did eat angels' food.--_Psalm_ ixxviii. 25. _Honey_. _Der Mensch ist, was er isst_,--"man is what he eats,"--says Feuerbach, and there were food-philosophies long before his time. Among primitive peoples, the food of the child often smacks of the Golden Age. Tennyson, in _Eleanore_, sings:-- "Or, the yellow-banded bees, Through half-open lattices Coming in the scented breeze, Fed thee, a child lying alone, With white honey, in fairy gardens cull'd-- A glorious child dreaming alone, In silk-soft folds, upon yielding down, With the hum of swarming bees Into dreamful slumber lull'd." This recalls the story of Cretan Zeus, fed, when an infant, by the nymphs in a cave on Mount Ida with the milk of the goat Amalthæa and honey brought by the bees of the mountain.