released and allowed to roam the forest with the other lions. It is the duty of the priests to feed and care for the lions and to hold communications with the dead kings when occasion arises. For that purpose the priests always live in a temple in the forest, where they receive frequent offerings of cattle for the lions. In this forest the lions are sacred and may not be killed, but in other parts of the country they may be slaughtered with impunity. Similarly, the Bahima think that at death the king’s wives are changed into leopards; the transformation takes place in like manner through the bursting of the dead bodies in a belt of the same sacred forest. There the leopards are daily fed with offerings of meat by priests, whose office is hereditary. Further, the Bahima are of opinion that the spirits of dead princes and princesses come to life again in the form of snakes, which burst from their dead bodies in another belt of the same forest: there is a temple in the forest where priests feed and guard the holy serpents. When the little snakes have issued from the corpses of the princes, they are fed with milk till they are big enough to go alone.(867) The El Kiboron clan of the Masai, in East Africa, imagine that when married men of the clan are buried, their bones turn into serpents. Hence the El Kiboron do not, like the other Masai, kill snakes: on the contrary they are glad to see the reptiles in the kraal and set out saucers of milk and honey for them on the ground. It is said that snakes never bite members of the clan.(868) The Ababu and other tribes of the Congo region believe that at death their souls transmigrate into the bodies of various animals, such as the hippopotamus, the leopard, the gorilla, and the gazelle; and on no account would a man eat the flesh of an animal of the particular kind which he expects to inhabit in the next life.(869) Some of the Caffres of the Zambesi region, in Portuguese territory, who believe in the transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals, judge of the species of animals into which a dead person has transmigrated by the resemblance which he bore to it in his life. Thus, the soul of a big burly man with prominent teeth will pass into an elephant; a strong man with a long beard will become a lion; an ugly man with a large mouth and thick lips will be a hyaena; and so on. Animals supposed to be tenanted by the spirits of the dead are treated as sacred and invulnerable. When a Portuguese lady, named Dona Maria, to whom the blacks were much attached, had departed this life, it chanced that a hyaena came repeatedly by night to the village and carried off pigs and kids. The lady’s old slaves would not do the creature the smallest hurt, saying, “It is Dona Maria, our good mistress. She is hungry and comes to her house seeking what she may devour.”(870)