The great god of Bowditch Island “was supposed to be embodied in a stone, which was carefully wrapped up with fine mats, and never seen by any one but the king” (note this characteristic touch of kingly priesthood), “and that only once a year, when the decayed mats were stripped off and thrown away. In sickness, offerings of fine mats were taken and rolled round the sacred stone, and thus it got busked up to a prodigious size; but as the idol was exposed to the weather out of doors, night and day, the mats soon rotted. No one dared to appropriate what had been offered to the god, and hence the old mats, as they were taken off, were heaped in a place by themselves and allowed to rot.” Now the reasonableness of all this is immediately apparent if we remember that the stones which stand on graves are habitually worshipped, and anointed with oil, milk, and blood. It is but a slight further step to regard the stone, not only as eating and drinking, but also as needing warmth and clothing. As an admirable example of the same train of thought, working out the same result elsewhere, compare this curious account of a stone idol at Inniskea (a rocky islet off the Mayo coast), given by the Earl of Roden, as late as 1851, in his _Progress of the Reformation in Ireland_: “In {103}the south island, in the house of a man named Monigan, a stone idol, called in the Irish ‘Neevougi,’ has been from time immemorial religiously preserved and worshipped. This god resembles in appearance a thick roll of home-spun flannel, which arises from the custom of dedicating a dress of that material to it whenever its aid is sought; this is sewn on by an old woman, its priestess, whose peculiar care it is. Of the early history of this idol no authentic information can be procured, but its power is believed to be immense; they pray to it in time of sickness; it is invoked when a storm is desired to dash some hapless ship upon their coast; and, again, the exercise of its power is solicited in calming the angry waves, to admit of fishing or visiting the mainland.” Nor is this a solitary instance in modern Europe. “In certain mountain districts of Norway,” says Dr. Tylor, “up to the end of the last century, the peasants used to preserve round stones, washed them every Thursday evening,.... smeared them with butter before the fire, laid them in the seat of honour on fresh straw, and at certain times of the year steeped them in ale, that they might bring luck and comfort to the house.”