The association of the sacred tree with actual idols or images of deceased ancestors is well seen in the following passage which I quote from Dr. Tylor: “A clump of larches on a Siberian steppe, a grove in the recesses of a forest, is the sanctuary of a Turanian tribe. Gaily-decked idols in their warm fur coats, each set up beneath its great tree swathed with cloth or tinplate, endless reindeer-hides and peltry hanging to the trees around, kettles and spoons and snuff-horns and household valuables strewn as offerings before the gods--such is the description of a Siberian holy grove, at the stage when the contact of foreign civilisation has begun by ornamenting the rude old ceremonial it must end by abolishing. A race ethnologically allied to these tribes, though risen to higher culture, kept up remarkable relics of tree-worship in Northern Europe. In {145}Esthonian districts, within the present century, the traveller might often see the sacred tree, generally an ancient lime, oak, or ash, standing inviolate in a sheltered spot near the dwelling-house; and the old memories are handed down of the time when the first blood of a slaughtered beast was sprinkled on its roots, that the cattle might prosper, or when an offering was laid beneath the holy linden, on the stone where the worshipper knelt on his bare knees, moving from east to west and back, which stone he kissed when he had said, ‘Receive the food as an offering.‘” After the evidence already given, I do not think there can be a reasonable doubt, in such a combination of tree and stone, that we have here a sacrifice to an ancestral spirit. Similarly, in the courtyard of a Bodo house is planted the sacred euphorbia of Batho, the national god, to which a priest offers prayer and kills a pig. In the island of Tjumba, in the East Indies, a festival is held after harvest, and vessels are filled with rice as a thank-offering to the gods. Then the sacred stone at the foot of a palm tree is sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed animal, and rice is laid on the stone for the gods. When the Khonds settle a new village, a sacred cotton tree must be planted with solemn rites, and beneath it is placed the sacrificial stone which embodies or represents the village deity. Among the Semites, says Professor Robertson Smith, “no Canaanite high place was complete without its sacred tree standing beside the altar.” We shall only fully understand the importance of these facts, however, when we come later to consider the subject of the manufacture of gods by deliberate process, and the nature of the bloody ceremonial which always accompanies it.