There is scarcely a land outside the pale of Christian civilization where the newborn infant is not surrounded by absurd, painful, or distressing ceremonies because of superstitions that may not be ignored, the “Evil Eye” that must be averted, or ceremonies that are to be observed because handed down from generation to generation. One of the most astonishing and picturesque of these observances is described by the Swiss missionary, Henri A. Junod, in his careful study of “The Life of a South African Tribe.” The second act is the _rite of the broken pot_.... This is a medical treatment and a religious ceremony combined. It is performed by the family doctor on the threshold of the hut in the following way: He puts into this piece of broken pottery pieces of skin of all the beasts of the bush: antelopes, wild cats, elephants, hippopotami, rats, civet cats, hyenas, elands, snakes of dangerous kinds; and roasts them till they burn. The smoke then rises, and he exposes the child to it for a long time, the body, face, nose, mouth. The baby begins to cry; he sneezes, he coughs; it is just what is wanted; then the doctor takes what remains of the pieces of skin, grinds them, makes a powder, mixes it with tihuhlu grease of the year before last, and consequently hard enough to make an ointment. With this ointment he rubs the whole body of the child, especially the joints, which he extends gently in order to assist the baby’s growth. All this fumigation and manipulation is intended to act as a preventive. Having been so exposed to all the external dangers, dangers which are represented by the beasts of the bush, the child may go out of the hut. He is now able “to cross the foot-prints of wild beasts” without harm.... This rite of the broken pot is also the great preventive remedy against the much dreaded ailment of babies, convulsions. [Sidenote: The Evil Eye.] From land to land you may travel, through Africa, Asia, and the Islands of the Pacific, and all the poor little babies and their older brothers and sisters will be found to be victims of superstitions that surround and hamper and often injure their pitiful little lives. The Evil Eye,--oh! how it is feared and how every possible and impossible means is used to avert it. You must not think of openly admiring a Mohammedan baby, or of wearing anything black on your head when making your first call upon it, for you would certainly cast the Evil Eye on it. A Maronite woman in the Lebanon mountains, Syria, had lost a baby three or four weeks old,--her first baby boy. She told a missionary that the child had died because while he was sick they opened an egg, and found therein an eye (the life-germ) and that was the Evil Eye which had killed the child. [Sidenote: Teething.]