he assembles the women of the house and they sing the same song as at the birth of a baby, and red lead is smeared on the parting of the hair of all the married women of the neighbourhood. When the worms pair, rejoicings are made as at a marriage.(639) Thus the silkworms are treated as far as possible like human beings. Hence the custom which prohibits the commerce of the sexes while the worms are hatching may be only an extension, by analogy, of the rule which is observed by many races, that the husband may not cohabit with his wife during pregnancy and lactation. (M118) On Lake Victoria Nyanza the Baganda fishermen use a long stout line which is supported on the surface of the water by wooden floats, while short lines with baited hooks attached to them depend from it at frequent intervals. The place where the fisherman makes his line, whether in his hut or his garden, is tabooed. People may not step over his cords or tools, and he himself has to observe a number of restrictions. He may not go near his wife or any other woman. He eats alone, works alone, sleeps alone. He may not wash, except in the lake. He may not eat salt or meat or butter. He may not smear any fat on his body. When the line is ready he goes to the god, asks his blessing on it, and offers him a pot of beer. In return he receives from the deity a stick or bit of wood to fasten to the line, and also some medicine of herbs to smoke and blow over the water in order that the fish may come to the line and be caught. Then he carries the line to the lake. If in going thither he should stumble over a stone or a tree-root, he takes it with him, and he does the same with any grass-seeds that may stick to his clothes. These stones, roots, and seeds he puts on the line, believing that just as he stumbled over them and they stuck to him, so the fish will also stumble over them and stick to the line. The taboo lasts till he has caught his first fish. If his wife has kept the taboo, he eats the fish with her; but if she has broken it, she may not partake of the fish. After that if he wishes to go in to his wife, he must take his line out of the water and place it in a tree or some other place of safety; he is then free to be with her. But so long as the line is in the water, he must keep apart from women, or the fish would at once leave the shore. Any breach of this taboo renders the line useless to him. He must sell it and make a new one and offer an expiatory offering to the god.(640) Again, in Uganda the fisherman offers fish to his canoe, believing that if he neglected to make this offering more than twice, his net would catch nothing. The fish thus offered to the canoe is eaten by the fishermen. But if at the time of emptying the traps there is any man in the canoe who has committed adultery, eaten flesh or salt, or rubbed his body with butter or fat, that man is not allowed to partake of the fish offered to the canoe. And if the sinner has not confessed his fault