festivals, or fastened by early Greeks and Romans on their temples. “They cook the heads of their slain enemies,” says Mr. Chalmers again, “to secure clean skulls to put on sacred places.” Adequately to develop the hints thus suggested, however, would require another book as long as the present one. Yet here is just one more such hint, from the same author, too pregnant to be omitted. “When the natives begin planting, they first take a bunch of bananas and sugar-cane, and go to the centre of the plantation, and call over the names of the dead belonging to their family, adding: ‘There is your food, your bananas and sugar-cane; let our food grow well, and let it be plentiful. If it does not grow well and plentiful, you all will be full of shame, and so shall we.’ “When they go on trading expeditions, they present their food to the spirits at the centre-post of the house, and ask the spirits to go before them and prepare the people, so that the trading may be prosperous. “When sickness is in the family, a pig is brought to the sacred place of the great spirit” (probably the chief ancestral ghost), “and killed. The carcase is then taken to the sacred place of the family, and the spirits are asked to accept it. Sins are confessed, such as bananas that are taken, or cocoanuts, and none have been presented, and leave not given to eat them. ‘There is a pig; accept, and remove the sickness.’ Death follows, and the day of burial arrives. The friends all stand round the open grave, and the chief’s sister or cousin” (the primitive priestess) “calls out in a loud voice, ‘You have been angry with us for {360}the bananas we have taken (or cocoanuts, as the case may be), and you have, in your anger, taken this child. Now let it suffice, and bury your anger.’ The body is then placed in the grave, and covered over with earth.” Here we have in brief a perfect epitome of savage theology, savage ceremonial, and savage atonement. I could enlarge not a little on its numerous implications.