At the entrance to their yam-fields the traveller may see on both sides of the path small mounds on which yams, stock-yams, beans, and maize are planted and appear to flourish with more than usual luxuriance. These little gardens, tended with peculiar care, are dedicated to the “guardian gods” of the owner of the land; there he cultivates for their benefit the same plants which he cultivates for his own use in the fields; and the notion is that the “guardian gods” will content themselves with eating the fruits which grow in their little private preserves and will not poach on the crops which are destined for human use.(717) (M197) These customs suggest that the little sacred rice-fields on which the Kayans of Borneo perform the various operations of husbandry in mimicry before they address themselves to the real labours of the field,(718) may be dedicated to the spirits of the rice to compensate them for the loss they sustain by allowing men to cultivate all the rest of the land for their own benefit. Perhaps the Rarian plain at Eleusis(719) was a spiritual preserve of the same kind set apart for the exclusive use of the corn-goddesses Demeter and Persephone. It may even be that the law which forbade the Hebrews to reap the corners and gather the gleanings of the harvest-fields and to strip the vines of their last grapes(720) was originally intended for the benefit, not of the human poor, but of the poor spirits of the corn and the vine, who had just been despoiled by the reapers and the vintagers, and who, if some provision were not made for their subsistence, would naturally die of hunger before another year came round. In providing for their wants the prudent husbandman was really consulting his own interests; for how could he expect to reap wheat and barley and to gather grapes next year if he suffered the spirits of the corn and of the vine to perish of famine in the meantime? This train of thought may possibly explain the wide-spread custom of offering the first-fruits of the crops to gods or spirits:(721) such offerings may have been originally not so much an expression of gratitude for benefits received as a means of enabling the benefactors to continue their benefactions in time to come. Primitive man has generally a shrewd eye to the main chance: he is more prone to provide for the future than to sentimentalise over the past.