appears that the argument for the pre-existence of the human soul, which Plato and Wordsworth​[351] drew from reminiscence, is fully accepted by some negro tribes of West Africa. In the Bilaspore district of India “a still-born child, or one who has passed away before the _Chhatti_ (the sixth day, the day of purification) is not taken out of the house for burial, but is placed in an earthen vessel (a _gharā_) and is buried in the doorway or in the yard of the house. Some say that this is done in order that the mother may bear another child.”​[352] It is said that among the Kondhs of India, on the day after a death, some boiled rice and a small fowl are taken to the place where the body was burned; there the fowl is split down the breast and placed on the spot, after which it is eaten and the soul of the departed is invited to enter a new-born child.​[353] On the fifth day after a death the Gonds perform the ceremony of bringing back the soul. They go to the riverside and call aloud the name of the deceased. {p105} Then they enter the river, catch a fish or an insect, and taking it home place it among the sainted dead of the family, believing that the spirit of their lost one has thus been brought back to the house. Sometimes the fish or insect is eaten in order that the spirit which it contains may be born again as a child.​[354] When a baby died within a month or two of birth, the Hurons did not dispose of its little body like those of grown people by depositing it on a scaffold; they buried it beside the road in order, so they said, that the child might enter secretly into the womb of some woman passing by and be born again into the world.​[355] Some of the ancient rules observed with regard to funerals in the Greek island of Ceos have been ingeniously explained by Mr. F. B. Jevons as designed to secure the rebirth of the departed in one of the women of the family.​[356] The widespread custom of burying the dead in the house was perhaps instituted for the same purpose,​[357] and the ancient Greek practice of sacrificing to the dead man at the grave on his birthday may possibly have originated in the same train of thought.​[358] For example, sacrifices were annually offered on their birthdays to Hippocrates by the Coans, to Aratus by the Sicyonians, and to Epicurus by his disciples.​[359] [Sidenote: Rites to procure the rebirth of edible animals and plants.]