Still more closely does the December feast (which took place, like Christmas, at the winter solstice) recall the cannibal practice; for here an image of the god was made of seeds, kneaded into dough with the blood of children. Such a Massacre of the Innocents occurs often elsewhere in similar connexions: we shall meet with it again on a subsequent occasion. The image was placed on the chief altar of the temple, and on the day of its Epiphany, the king of Mexico offered incense to it. Bambino gods like this are well known in other countries. Next day it was taken down, and a priest flung at it a flint-tipped arrow. This was called “killing the god so that his body might be eaten.” One of the priests then cut out the heart of the image and gave it to the actual king to eat, just as in other sacrifices the priest cut out the throbbing heart of the human victim and placed it in the mouth of the cannibal god. The rest of the image was divided into small pieces, {342}which were distributed to all the males of the community, adults or children. The ceremony was called “_God is Eaten_.” I will not multiply examples of the main principle of eating the corn-god in the shape of little cakes or human images, which have been collected in abundance all the world over. Mr. Frazer’s work is a perfect thesaurus of analogous customs. I will rather call attention to one or two special parallels with similar god-eating rites, cannibal or animal, which occur elsewhere. At the close of the rice harvest in Boeroe, in the East Indies, each clan meets at a common sacrificial meal, to which every member of the clan is bound to contribute a little of his new rice from the current season. This is called “eating the soul of the rice.” But some of the rice is also set apart and offered to the spirits--that is, I take it, to the ghosts of ancestors. This combination is like the common case of the human victim being offered on the altar-stone of earlier ancestral deities. Amongst the Alfoers of Celebes, again, it is the priest who sows the first rice-seeds, and plucks the first ripe rice in each field. This he roasts and grinds into meal, giving some of it to each member of the family. Here the priest no doubt represents the old tribal priest-king. Several similar practices are reported from India, only one of which need at present detain us. Among the Hindoos of the Deccan there is a magical and sacramental eating of the new rice; but the special point of interest to be noted here is the fact that some of it is offered to the god Ganesa, after which the whole family partake of the produce. Among the Kafirs of Natal and Zululand, however, it is at the king’s kraal that the people assemble for their sacramental feast of new fruits, where they dance and perform certain sacred ceremonies. In this case, the king, the living god, seems to take the place of the god, the dead king, in the Indian festival. Various grains are mixed with the flesh of a sacrificed