broken calabash from which he has drunk, &c.—
wrap it in a leaf like a cigar, then slowly burn it
at one end. As the rubbish burns, the man
decays and dies—or it is supposed he will do so.
No one in the island of Tanna falls ill by natural
means: all by the arts and practices of the
disease-makers, who drive a roaring trade by the
ignorance of their fellow-countrymen. As soon
as any one is sick he knows that some sorcerer
is burning his rubbish, and shell trumpets, which
can be heard for miles round, are blown to tell
the disease-makers to stop and wait for the
presents which shall be sent next morning.
"Night after night, Mr. Turner"—the authority
quoted—"used to hear the melancholy too-tooing
of the shells, entreating the wizards to stop
plaguing their victims. And when a disease-
maker fell sick himself, he believed that some
one was burning his rubbish, and had his shells
too blown for mercy." An African carries his
sorcery like his enmity beyond the grave; wherefore
he fastens the jawbone of his slain enemy to
a tabor or a horn, and his skull to a big drum,
"that every crash and blast may send a thrill
through the ghost of the dead owner."

Divination, from the time of the Sortes
Virgilianæ and earlier, to the present moment
of the key and the Bible and Monsieur Edmond
and his velvet dressing-gown, has always been a
favourite tampering with the future, and an
universal. An Algonquin wizard makes a grass or
cloth image of any animal he wishes to kill,
hangs it up in his wigwam and shoots arrows at
it, repeating an incantation; if his arrows stick
he will kill his game, if they fall out he will miss.
When a Maori war party is about to start, the
priests set up sticks to represent the warriors;
those whose sticks fall down are sure to be
slain, those which stand steady signify those
who will escape. When a Fijian child is sick,
and they want to know if it will live or die,
they shake a bunch of dry cocoa-nuts; if all
fall off the little one will recover, if one
remains it will die. The Fijians spin cocoa-nuts,
too, and then prophesy of future events
according to the direction in which the eye of the
nut lies when it rests still; and they sit on the
ground and prophesy by their legs—if the right
leg trembles first it is a good sign, and if the
left it is a bad one; which is not very unlike
what even sane and educated people amongst
ourselves think and do with more or less secresy
and belief—not to speak of the Scottish
pleasantries on All Hallow E'en which will occur
to the mind of every one naturally. For spoken
or written charms—Abracadabra and the like—
we have also much the same manner of acting
everywhere. A Chinese physician writes his
prescription on a piece of paper, and if he has
not got the drug prescribed, he gives the patient
the paper itself in ashes or an infusion; a
Moslem washes an engraven or written verse of
the Koran, and drinks the water in blissful
belief of its efficacy as a healing power; and we
charm away warts with a muttered spell and a
stick of elder.

Indigestion, which is the most prolific of all
the causes of superstition, still retains some trace
of the old belief in the name of "nightmare,"
that viewless hag which rides men's souls and
bodies to illimitable distress and suffering. The
Australians, too, believe that nightmare is an
evil spirit sitting on the sufferer, and throw a
lighted brand in the direction where they think
he is, cursing him as they throw it. He came,
they say, for a light, so now he has got it.
They have another demon called Koin, who is
like one of themselves, painted with pipeclay
and carrying a fire stick; and he carries off
sleeping men as an eagle carries off a lamb;
but he drops them if their companions shout and
scare him away, else he takes them to his fire in
the bush. The poor victims try to cry out, but
cannot—they are choked and strangled. Koin
disappears at daylight, and the man finds himself safe
back at his own fireside again. Other savages,
who are black themselves, paint their devil as
a white man. The Dyaks think that fainting and
coma are caused by the soul leaving the body,
and going forth on some distant expedition of
its own. In sleep, too, they think the soul has
gone out like an owl a-mousing, and dreams are
what it sees when thus on its travels abroad,
specially dreams of one's own country, if absent
in the body. In Africa, people who dream of
their dead relatives, sacrifice victims on their
tombs to calm their disquietude; sure that
something is not well with them, else they
would not go wandering about the world,
meeting thus with souls to whom their
appearance in dreams is eloquent enough of their
discontent. Is there much difference between
this belief and that which makes the ghosts of
the dead rap nightly on chairs and tables, and
spell out very doubtful messages by means of a
printed alphabet to their survivors?

What would our pretty little daughter, aged
nine, dressing her wax doll and making believe
that it is a real live baby wanting to be fed, or
put to sleep, or washed, or whipped—if she
were told that she was only a little savage,
and doing just what the savage women do?
Yet it is so. Among some North American
Indian tribes, a mother who has lost her child
makes a doll of its cradle, which she fills with
black feathers and quills, and carries about
with her for a year or more; when she stops
anywhere she sets up the cradle and talks to
it, just as she would have done had the
child been alive. In Africa they have a nearer
resemblance still, in a rude doll representing
the lost child, and kept as a memorial.
Almost all through Africa twins are regarded
with abhorrence, and when born either one
or both are killed. If one, as among the
Wanyamwezi, the mother wraps a gourd or
calabash in skins, and places it beside the
survivor, talking to it, and making believe to
feed it. The Bechuana married women carry a
doll about with them until they have a child,
when they discard the make-believe, which is
only a long calabash wound round with beads,
for the real bambino black and woolly. The
Basuto women have clay dolls which they treat