Similarly, Mr. Wyatt Gill, the well-known missionary, writes of a dead baby at Boera, in New Guinea: “It will be covered with two inches of soil, the friends watching beside the grave; but eventually the skull and smaller bones will be preserved and worn by the mother.” And of the Suau people he says: “Enquiring the use of several small houses, I learned that it is to cover grave-pits. All the members of a family at death occupy the same grave, the earth that thinly covered the last occupant being scooped out to admit the newcomer. These graves are shallow; the dead are buried in a sitting posture, hands folded. {070}The earth is thrown in up to the mouth only. An earthen pot covers the head. After a time the pot is taken off, the perfect skull removed and cleansed--eventually to be hung up in a basket or net inside the dwelling of the deceased over the fire, to blacken in the smoke.” In Africa, again, the skull is frequently preserved in such a pot and prayed to. In America, earthenware pots have been found moulded round human skulls in mounds at New Madrid and elsewhere; the skull cannot be removed without breaking the vessel. Indeed, this curious method of preservation in pots seems to be very widespread; we get perhaps a vague hint or reminiscence of its former prevalence in Europe in the story of Isabella and the pot of basil. The special selection and preservation of the head as an object of worship thus noted in New Guinea and the Malay Archipelago is also still found among many other primitive peoples. For instance, the Andamanese widows keep the skulls of their husbands as a precious possession: and the New Caledonians, in case of sickness or calamities, “present offerings of food to the skulls of the departed.” Mr. Spencer quotes several similar examples, a few of which alone I extract from his pages. “‘In the private fetish-hut of King Adolee, at Badagry, the skull of that monarch’s father is preserved in a clay vessel placed in the earth.’ He ‘gently rebukes it if his success does not happen to answer his expectations.’ Similarly among the Mandans, who place the skulls of their dead in a circle, each wife knows the skull of her former husband or child, ‘and there seldom passes a day that she does not visit it, with a dish of the best cooked food.... There is scarcely an hour in a pleasant day, but more or less of these women may be seen sitting or lying by the skull of their child or husband--talking to it in the most pleasant and endearing language that they can use (as they were wont to do in former days), and seemingly getting an answer back.’”