When they entered people's houses they threw a powder on the faces of the inmates, who were thrown thereby into so deep a slumber that nothing could wake them, until the witches were gone.... Sometimes they threw these powders on the fruits of the field and produced hail which destroyed them. On these occasions the demon accompanied them in the form of a husbandman, and when they threw the powders they said: "Polvos, polvos, Pierda se tado, Queden los nuestros, Y abrasense otros."[322] Higgins says: "The flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the Χρης or Ceres in the Εὐχᾰριστία."[323] What relation these powders have had to the "carnestolendas" of the Spanish and Portuguese, already alluded to, and the throwing of "confetti" by the Italians, which is a modification, it would be hard to say. Some relation would appear to be suggested. USE OF POLLEN BY THE ISRAELITES AND EGYPTIANS. There are some suggestions of a former use of pollen among the Israelites and Egyptians. Manna, which we are assured was at one time a source of food to the Hebrews, was afterward retained as an offering in the temples. Forlong, however, denies that it ever could have entered into general consumption. He says: Manna, as food, is an absurdity, but we have the well-known produce of the desert oak or ash--Fraxinus.... An omer of this was precious, and in this quantity, at the spring season, not difficult to get; it was a specially fit tribute to be "laid up" before any Phallic Jah, as it was the pollen of the tree of Jove and of Life, and in this sense the tribe lived spiritually on such "spiritual manna" as this god supplied or was supplied with.[324] The detestation in which the bean was held by the high-caste people of Egypt does not demonstrate that the bean was not an article of food to a large part of the population, any more than the equal detestation of the occupation of swineherd would prove that none of the poor made use of swine's flesh. The priesthood of Egypt were evidently exerting themselves to stamp out the use of a food once very common among their people, and to supersede it with wheat or some other cereal. They held a man accursed who in passing through a field planted with beans had his clothing soiled with their pollen. Speke must have encountered a survival of this idea when he observed in equatorial Africa, near the sources of the Nile, and among people whose features proclaimed their Abyssinian origin, the very same aversion. He was unable to buy food, simply because he and some of his followers had eaten "the bean called maharagŭé." Such a man, the natives believed, "if he tasted the products of their cows, would destroy their cattle."[325]