(M232) In Togo, a district of West Africa, a secret religious society flourishes under the name of the Yewe order. Both men and women are admitted to it. The teaching and practice of the order are lewd and licentious. Murderers and debtors join it for the sake of escaping from justice, for the members are not amenable to the laws. On being initiated every one receives a new name, and thenceforth his or her old name may never be mentioned by anybody under penalty of a heavy fine. Should the old name be uttered in a quarrel by an uninitiated person, the aggrieved party, who seems to be oftener a woman than a man, pretends to fall into a frenzy, and in this state rushes into the house of the offender, smashes his pots, destroys the grass roof, and tears down the fence. Then she runs away into the forest, where the simple people believe that she is changed into a leopard. In truth she slinks by night into the conventual buildings of the order, and is there secretly kept in comfort till the business is settled. At last she is publicly brought back by the society with great pomp, her body smeared with red earth and adorned with an artificial tail in order to make the ignorant think that she has really been turned into a leopard.(1431) (M233) When the name is held to be a vital part of the person, it is natural to suppose that the mightier the person the more potent must be his name. Hence the names of supernatural beings, such as gods and spirits, are commonly believed to be endowed with marvellous virtues, and the mere utterance of them may work wonders and disturb the course of nature. The Warramunga of central Australia believe in a formidable but mythical snake called the Wollunqua, which lives in a pool. When they speak of it amongst themselves they designate it by another name, because they say that, were they to call the snake too often by its real name, they would lose control over the creature, and it would come out of the water and eat them all up.(1432) For this reason, too, the sacred books of the Mongols, which narrate the miraculous deeds of the divinities, are allowed to be read only in spring or summer; because at other seasons the reading of them would bring on tempests or snow.(1433) When Mr. Campbell was travelling with some Bechuanas, he asked them one morning after breakfast to tell him some of their stories, but they informed him that were they to do so before sunset, the clouds would fall from the heavens upon their heads.(1434) The Sulka of New Britain believe in a certain hostile spirit named Kot, to whose wrath they attribute earthquakes, thunder, and lightning. Among the things which provoke his vengeance is the telling of tales and legends by day; stories should be told only at evening or night.(1435) Most of the rites of the Navajo Indians may be celebrated only in winter, when the thunder is silent and the rattlesnakes are hibernating. Were they to tell of their chief gods or narrate the