soul is conceived not in human but in animal form. The soul is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of the body, especially the mouth and nostrils. Hence in Celebes they sometimes fasten fish-hooks to a sick man’s nose, navel, and feet, so that if his soul should try to escape it may be hooked and held fast.(400) One of the “properties” of a Haida medicine-man is a hollow bone, in which he bottles up departing souls, and so restores them to their owners.(401) The Marquesans used to hold the mouth and nose of a dying man, in order to keep him in life, by preventing his soul from escaping.(402) When any one yawns in their presence the Hindus always snap their thumbs, believing that this will hinder the soul from issuing through the open mouth.(403) The Itonamas in South America seal up the eyes, nose, and mouth of a dying person, in case his ghost should get out and carry off other people.(404) In Southern Celebes, to prevent the escape of a woman’s soul at childbirth, the nurse ties a band as tightly as possible round the body of the expectant mother.(405) And lest the soul of the babe should escape and be lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoers of Celebes, when a birth is about to take place, are careful to close every opening in the house, even the keyhole; and they stop up every chink and cranny in the walls. Also they tie up the mouths of all animals inside and outside the house, for fear one of them might swallow the child’s soul. For a similar reason all persons present in the house, even the mother herself, are obliged to keep their mouths shut the whole time the birth is taking place. When the question was put, Why they did not hold their noses also, lest the child’s soul should get into one of them? the answer was that breath being exhaled as well as inhaled through the nostrils, the soul would be expelled before it could have time to settle down.(406)