(M199) But some hunters hamstring the game for a different purpose; they hope thereby to prevent the dead beast or its ghost from getting up and running away. This is the motive alleged for the practice by Koui hunters in Laos; they think that the spells which they utter in the chase may lose their magical virtue, and that the slaughtered animal may consequently come to life again and escape. To prevent that catastrophe they therefore hamstring the beast as soon as they have butchered it.(770) When an Esquimau of Alaska has killed a fox, he carefully cuts the tendons of all the animal’s legs in order to prevent the ghost from reanimating the body and walking about.(771) But hamstringing the carcase is not the only measure which the prudent savage adopts for the sake of disabling the ghost of his victim. In old days, when the Aino went out hunting and killed a fox first, they took care to tie its mouth up tightly in order to prevent the ghost of the animal from sallying forth and warning its fellows against the approach of the hunter.(772) The Gilyaks of the Amoor River put out the eyes of the seals they have killed, lest the ghosts of the slain animals should know their slayers and avenge their death by spoiling the seal-hunt.(773) The custom of putting out the eyes of slaughtered animals appears to be not uncommon among primitive peoples, and we may suspect that even where a different reason is alleged for it, the true original motive was to blind the dangerous ghost of the injured creature, and so to incapacitate it for retaliating on the slayer. Thus, when a Samoyed has killed a wild reindeer, one of the first things he does is to cut out the eyes and throw them away “in order to ensure a good bag in future”; and he buries the eyes in some place where no woman or adult girl is likely to step over them, since that also would spoil his luck in the chase.(774) Among the tribes of South-east Africa hunters pluck out the right eye of any animal they have killed and pour a charmed medicine into the empty socket.(775) Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia a man whose daughter has just arrived at puberty may not hunt or trap for a month, or he will have no luck. Moreover, he should cut off the head of the first grouse he snares, pluck out the eyes, and insert two small roots of the _Zygadenus elegans_ Pursch. in the orbits and another in its mouth, and having done so he ought to hang up the bird’s head above his pillow. If he neglects these precautions, he will not be able to snare any more grouse or other small game.(776) No doubt the ceremonial pollution contracted by his daughter at this critical period of her life is supposed to infect the hunter and render him unacceptable to the game;(777) hence it seems a mere elementary dictate of prudence to hoodwink the grouse effectually by putting out their eyes. Sometimes, perhaps, the cutting out of the eyes of fierce and powerful animals may be a rational, not a superstitious, precaution.