I would like to add, however, that the ideas here formulated must give a new meaning to many points we could not at first understand in ceremonies mentioned in our earlier chapters. I will take only one example--that of the place of Samoyed sacrifice which Baron Nordenskiôld saw on Vaygats Island. We can now divine the meaning of the heap of reindeer skulls piled around the rude open-air shrine; for reindeer are the sacred and the-anthropic animals of the northern races; while the preservation {358}of their heads at the hypœthral altar of the elder gods or ghosts has its usual holy and oracular meaning. We can also guess why remains of a fireplace could be seen by the side, at which the sacrificial and sacramental meal was habitually prepared; and why the mouths of the idols were smeared with blood, in order to make the older gods or ghosts participators in the festival. Indeed, any reader who has followed me thus far, and who now turns back to the earlier chapters of this book, will find that many details appear to him in quite a different light, and will see why I have insisted beforehand on some minor points which must have seemed to him at the time wholly irrelevant. Many other curious ceremonies that seem equally meaningless at first in narratives of travel will also come to have a significant meaning when thus regarded. For instance. Mr. Chalmers tells us that among the New Guinea natives of particular districts, “pigs are never killed but in the one place, and then they are offered to the spirit. The blood is poured out there, and the carcase is then carried back to the village, to be divided, cooked, and eaten. Pigs’ skulls are kept and hung up in the house. Food for a feast, such as at house-building”--a most pregnant hint--“is placed near the post where the skulls hang, and a prayer is said. When the centre-post is set up, the spirits have wallaby, fish, and bananas presented to them, and they are besought to keep that house always full of food, and that it may not fall when the wind is strong.” If we recall other cases elsewhere, we can hardly doubt that the pigs in these instances are killed as sacred victims at the grave of the chief family ancestor; especially when Mr. Chalmers also tells us that “each family has a sacred place where they carry offerings to the spirits of deceased ancestors, whom they greatly fear.” When sickness, famine, or scarcity of fish occur, it is these spirits that have to be appeased. And if we recollect once more that in so many cases the central post of the hut is based on a human or animal victim, both {359}in New Guinea and elsewhere, we can hardly doubt that to this household god or foundation-ghost the offerings at the central post are presented. Finally, the skulls of the pigs which are kept in the house and hung on the post remind us on the one hand of the skulls of ancestor-gods similarly preserved, and on the other hand of the skulls of theanthropic victims kept by the people of India at their