There is a good deal more evidence that in Egypt the slain corn-spirit—the dead Osiris—was represented by a human victim, whom the reapers slew on the harvest-field, mourning his death in a dirge, to which the Greeks, through a verbal misunderstanding, gave the name of Maneros.(1315) For the legend of Busiris seems to preserve a reminiscence of human sacrifices once offered by the Egyptians in connection with the worship of Osiris. Busiris was said to have been an Egyptian king who sacrificed all strangers on the altar of Zeus. The origin of the custom was traced to a barrenness which afflicted the land of Egypt for nine years. A Cyprian seer informed Busiris that the barrenness would cease if a man were annually sacrificed to Zeus. So Busiris instituted the sacrifice. But when Hercules came to Egypt, and was being dragged to the altar to be sacrificed, he burst his bonds and slew Busiris and his son.(1316) Here then is a legend that in Egypt a human victim was annually sacrificed to prevent the failure of the crops, and a belief is implied that an omission of the sacrifice would have entailed a recurrence of that infertility which it was the object of the sacrifice to prevent. So the Pawnees, as we have seen, believed that an omission of the human sacrifice at planting would have been followed by a total failure of their crops. The name Busiris was in reality the name of a city, _pe-Asar_, “the house of Osiris”(1317) the city being so called because it contained the grave of Osiris. The human sacrifices were said to have been offered at his grave, and the victims were red-haired men, whose ashes were scattered abroad by means of winnowing-fans.(1318) In the light of the foregoing discussion, this Egyptian tradition admits of a consistent and fairly probable explanation. Osiris, the corn-spirit, was annually represented at harvest by a stranger, whose red hair made him a suitable representative of the ripe corn. This man, in his representative character, was slain on the harvest-field, and mourned by the reapers, who prayed at the same time that the corn-spirit might revive and return (_mââ-ne-rha_, Maneros) with renewed vigour in the following year. Finally, the victim, or some part of him, was burned, and the ashes scattered by winnowing-fans over the fields to fertilise them. Here the choice of the representative on the ground of his resemblance to the corn which he was to represent agrees with the Mexican and African customs already described.(1319) Similarly the Romans sacrificed red-haired puppies in spring, in the belief that the crops would thus grow ripe and ruddy;(1320) and to this day in sowing wheat a Bavarian sower will sometimes wear a golden ring, that the corn may grow yellow.(1321) Again, the scattering of the Egyptian victim’s ashes is identical with the Marimo and Khond custom.(1322) His identification with the corn comes out again in the fact that his ashes were winnowed; just as