Observances regulating or restricting the use of food were in the main connected with the customs relating to death, sexual functions, and birth. That is to say it was primarily the persons affected by these occurrences, and next to these such as were engaged in acts of intense worship or shamanistic practices, who were prohibited from using certain or all foods. As already stated, animal food rather than vegetable, and meat rather than fish, and among meat that of the deer and elk, the largest of the game animals, were particularly subjected to restriction. In Northwestern California the idea was very deeply rooted that the deer when killed and eaten are not destroyed, but come to life again and report to their fellows their treatment in the hands of the hunter. Any violation of the numerous stringent observances regarding deer meat are therefore known to all the deer, who, as their capture is always a voluntary act on their part, are in position to utterly destroy his luck in the chase if not placated by certain spoken formulae. In Southern California young people, or in some cases the hunter himself, must not eat his game. Fasting is less frequently and less rigorously practiced by the California tribes than by those of most other parts of North America. This is in keeping with the generally lower pitch of intensity of their religious feeling. Many public ceremonies are not accompanied by any requirement of abstention from food. In the Northwestern region it is only the principal priest, in whom the most sacred part of the ceremony is vested, who fasts. On the other hand there is a general feeling in this region that not only acts of a religious nature but ordinary work cannot be well performed after eating. Among the men of Northwestern California breakfast was therefore habitually slight or entirely omitted. Perhaps the greatest development of the practice of fasting in North America occurs in connection with the acquisition of shamanistic power. Shamanism is fully as important among the California Indians as elsewhere, but differs in that it is more frequently regarded as an obsession, something that of its own accord comes upon a man rather than something that it is sought to acquire by actions. Much of the incentive for fasting among other Indians is therefore lacking, and when the practice is observed it is usually less rigorous. In Northwestern California, for instance, a person engaged in almost any supernatural or religious practice abstains from drinking water; but as to practical effect this provision is done away with through his being allowed to drink thin acorn soup at will.