The following were the interesting if somewhat repulsive ingredients of this very powerful fetish. There was first, and chiefly, the brains of the old man’s father, who had gained eminence and success according to Fang ideals. Some days after the father’s death, when the body was partly decomposed, the son visited his grave at midnight—entirely naked—opened the shallow grave, severed the head from the body, and hung it up in a house, letting the decomposing brain drip upon some white chalk. To this he added one of the old man’s teeth and a bit of his hair and cuttings of his nails, also a strip of flesh cut from the dead man’s arm and dried over the fire. When the owner of such a fetish is about to engage in any considerable enterprise he rubs a portion of the brains upon his forehead and thereby possesses himself of all the serviceable qualities of the deceased—his adroitness in lying, his skill in cheating, his cleverness in stealing goods or other men’s wives or in killing his enemies. If he is going to talk a big palaver he places the strip of dried flesh in his mouth, and keeps it there all the time he is talking, that he may be eloquent and successful. A man possessing this kind of fetish, if he were going to a trading-house, would not hesitate to rub a portion of the brains and chalk upon his hand, so that in shaking hands with the white man it might pass to the white man’s hand and make him benevolent. Some of them think that having thus put medicine on the white man’s hand he will give them anything they ask. The hostility of spirits other than ancestors is appeased in various ways. Arbitrary restraints and prohibitions are frequently imposed upon children soon after birth, to be observed through life. Such prohibitions usually have reference to a particular spirit which is always present with the inhibited person. The commonest prohibition is that of some particular food. Among my schoolboys there were always several who could not eat plantain, although it is the food that they like best. It was often difficult to provide other food for them; but they would have died rather than eat plantain. Women are prohibited from eating certain kinds of meat, or certain parts of an animal—usually (by a strange coincidence) the very parts that the men like best. There is scarcely a limit to the self-denial sometimes involved in the observance of these arbitrary restrictions.