[Sidenote: Sacred groves.] Even where no mention is made of wood-spirits, we may generally assume that when trees or groves are sacred and inviolable, it is because they are believed to be either inhabited or animated by sylvan deities. In Central India the _bar_ tree (_Ficus Indica_) and the _pipal_ (_Ficus religiosa_) are sacred, and every child learns the saying that “it is better to die a leper than pluck a leaf of a _pipal_, and he who can wound a _bar_ will kick his little sister.”[173] In Livonia there is a sacred grove in which, if any man fells a tree or breaks a branch, he will die within the year.[174] The Wotyaks have sacred groves. A Russian who ventured to hew a tree in one of them fell sick and died next day.[175] The heathen Cheremiss of South-Eastern Russia have sacred groves, and woe to him who dares to fell one of the holy trees. If the author of the sacrilege is unknown, they take a cock or a goose, torture it to death and then throw it on the fire, while they pray to the gods to punish the sinner and cause him to perish like the bird.[176] Near a chapel of St. Ninian, in the parish of Belly, there stood more than a century and a half ago a row of trees, “all of equal size, thick planted for about the length of a butt,” which were “looked upon by the superstitious papists as sacred trees, from which they reckon it sacrilege to take so much as a branch or any of the fruit.”[177] So in the island of Skye some two hundred and fifty years ago there was a holy lake, “surrounded by a fair wood, which none presumes to cut”; and those who ventured to infringe its sanctity by breaking even a twig either sickened on the spot or were visited afterwards by “some signal inconvenience.”[178] Sacrifices offered at cutting down trees are doubtless meant to appease the wood-spirits. In Gilgit it is usual to sprinkle goat’s blood on a tree of any kind before felling it.[179] The Akikuyu of British East Africa hold the _mugumu_ or _mugomo_ tree, a species of fig, sacred on account of its size and fine appearance; hence they do not ruthlessly cut it down like all other trees which cumber a patch of ground that is to be cleared for tillage. Groves of this tree are sacred. In them no axe may be laid to any tree, no branch broken, no firewood gathered, no grass burnt; and wild animals which have taken refuge there may not be molested. In these sacred groves sheep and goats are sacrificed and prayers are offered for rain or fine weather or in behalf of sick children. The whole meat of the sacrifices is left in the grove for God (_Ngai_) to eat; the fat is placed in a cleft of the trunk or in the branches as a tit-bit for him. He lives up in the boughs but comes down to partake of the food.[180] § 2. Beneficent Powers of Tree-Spirits