There is an obscure connection between this curious and repulsive food custom of the Seri and the mortuary customs of the tribe, which was not detected until the opportunity for personal inquiry had gone by. About the rancherias on Isla Tiburon, and especially about the extensive house-group at the base of Punta Tormenta, there are burial places marked by cairns of cobbles, or by heaps of thorny brambles where cobbles are not accessible; and most of these cairns and bramble-piles are supplemented by hoards of desiccated feces carefully stored in shells, usually of _Arca_ (a typical specimen is illustrated in figure 25). The hoards range from 50 to 500 shells in quantity, and there were fully a score of them at Punta Tormenta alone. About the newer rancherias, as at Rada Ballena, where there are no cemeteries, the hoards are simply piled about small clumps of shrubbery. The meaning of the association of the dietetic residua and death in the Seri mind is not wholly clear; yet the connection between the “strong food” for the warpath and the mystical food for the manes in the long journey to the hereafter is close enough to give some inkling of the meaning.[284] [284] Cf. Scatologic Rites of all Nations, by Captain John G. Bourke, 1891, especially chapter LI, pp. 459-460. The Seri custom, resting, as it does, on an evident economic basis, tends to explain the scatophagy of the Hopi and other tribes described by Bourke. [Illustration: FIG. 25—Scatophagic supplies.] * * * * *