the same ceremonies. The bones were then given to the dog to eat; if he did not eat them all up, the remains were buried under the dung in the cattle-stall. This ceremony was observed at the beginning of December. On the day on which it occurred no bad word might be spoken.(242) Such was the custom about two hundred years ago. At the present day in Lithuania, when new potatoes or loaves made from the new corn are being eaten, all the people at table pull each other’s hair.(243) The meaning of the latter custom is obscure, but a similar custom was certainly observed by the heathen Lithuanians at their solemn sacrifices.(244) Many of the Esthonians of the island of Oesel will not eat bread baked of the new corn till they have first taken a bite at a piece of iron.(245) The iron is here plainly a charm, intended to render harmless the spirit that is in the corn.(246) In Sutherlandshire at the present day, when the new potatoes are dug all the family must taste them, otherwise “the spirits in them [the potatoes] take offence, and the potatoes would not keep.”(247) In one part of Yorkshire it is still the custom for the clergyman to cut the first corn; and my informant believes that the corn so cut is used to make the communion bread.(248) If the latter part of the custom is correctly reported (and analogy is all in its favour), it shows how the Christian communion has absorbed within itself a sacrament which is doubtless far older than Christianity. At the close of the rice harvest in Boeroe, East Indies, each clan (_fenna_) meets at a common sacramental meal, to which every member of the clan is bound to contribute a little of the new rice. This meal is called “eating the soul of the rice,” a name which clearly indicates the sacramental character of the repast. Some of the rice is also set apart and offered to the spirits.(249) Amongst the Alfoers of Celebes the priest sows the first rice-seed and plucks the first ripe rice in each field. This rice he roasts and grinds into meal, and gives some of it to each of the household.(250) Shortly before the rice harvest in Bolang Mongondo, Celebes, an offering is made of a small pig or a fowl. Then the priest plucks a little rice, first on his own field and then on those of his neighbours. All the rice thus plucked by him he dries along with his own, and then gives it back to the respective owners, who have it ground and boiled. When it is boiled the women take it back, with an egg, to the priest, who offers the egg in sacrifice and returns the rice to the women. Of this rice every member of the family, down to the youngest child, must partake. After this ceremony every one is free to get in his rice.(251) Amongst the Burghers, a tribe of the Neilgherry Hills in Southern India, the first handful of seed is sown and the first sheaf reaped by a Curumbar—a man of a different tribe, whom the Burghers regard as sorcerers. The grain contained in the first sheaf “is that day reduced to