According to Mr. Macdonald, men would often sacrifice to their own particular ancestor, by putting down a little flour inside the hut, at the head of their sleeping-mat. Omens were drawn from the shape of this little heap of flour—whether it fell so as to form a neat cone, or otherwise. Beer, also, was made to furnish omens; it was poured out on the ground, and if it sank in, the god accepted the offering. The same writer says that ‘when a deceased smoker wants tobacco, his worshippers put it on a plate and set fire to it.’ Matope, the chief of a village near Blantyre, died in 1893. In the following year, the Rev. J. A. Smith (now of Mlanje), happening to be at the village, saw, as he told me, the head-men take out the dead chief’s snuff-box, fill it with snuff, and place his stool in a certain spot, sprinkling snuff all round it. ‘This is done from time to time’ (I quote from my diary) ‘during the first year or two after a death—after this time the spirit ceases to haunt the place.’ In the Upper Shiré district, I was not very successful in gleaning information, but have a note that a girl told me the ‘Angoni’ _a-pempera Mulungu_ (‘pray to God’) after the following fashion: ‘The people here sometimes sacrifice (_kwisula_) a goat; it is done by the head-man, and the people all stand round _nda! nda! nda!_ (_i.e._ in a row or circle); they eat the meat afterwards.’ Here too, evidently, the head-man acts on behalf of the village; and though it is not clear whether _Mulungu_ here means the spirit of a dead chief, or a Supreme Deity, this is, for the moment, immaterial. I do not know whether the word _kwisula_ is Nyanja or not, as I never heard it on any other occasion, and have hitherto been unable to trace it.