674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the Australians, Tasmanians, and Abipones, if the name of a deceased 

 person happened to be a common name e. g., the name of an animal, 

 or plant this name was abolished, and a new one substituted for it.* 

 During the residence of the Jesuit missionary Dobritzhoffer among 

 the Abipones, the name for tiger was thus changed three times.f 

 Among the Indians of Columbia near relatives of a deceased person 

 often change their names, under the impression that the ghost will 

 return if he hears the familiar names. J 



I must pass lightly over the kindlier modes of barring the dead by 

 providing for the personal comforts of the poor ghost in his long 

 home. One instance, however, of the minute care with which the 

 survivors will provide for the wants of the dead, in order that he may 

 have no possible excuse for returning, I can not refrain from mention- 

 ing. In the German district of Voigtland,** with its inclement sky, they 

 never forget to place in the coffin an umbrella and a pair of goloshes. 

 Whether these utensils are intended for use in heaven, or elsewhere, 

 is a question which I must leave to theologians. 



A pathetic example is afforded by some Indian tribes of New 

 Mexico, who drop milk from the mother's breast on the lips of her 

 dead babe.|| 



The nearly universal practice of leaving food on the tomb, or of 

 actually passing it into the grave by means of an aperture or tube, is 

 too well known to need illustration. Like the habit of dressing the 

 dead or dying in his best clothes, A it probably originated in the 

 selfish but not unkindly desire to induce the perturbed spirit to rest in 

 the grave, and not come plaguing the survivors for food and raiment. 



Merely mentioning the customs of building a little house for the 

 accommodation of the soul either on the grave or on the way to 

 it,^ and of leaving straw on the road, in the hope that the weary ghost 

 would sit down on it and never get as far as the house,| I now come 

 to two modes of barring the ghost, which from their importance I 

 have reserved to the last I mean the methods of barring the ghost 

 by fire and water. 



First, by fire. After a funeral certain heathen Siberians, who 

 greatly fear the dead, seek to get rid of the ghost of the departed by 

 leaping over a fire.J Similarly at Rome, mourners returning from a 



* Tylor, ibid., p. 144 sqq. 



\ Klemm, ii, p. 99 ; Dobritzhoffer, " The Abipones," ii, p. 208 sqq. 

 \ Bancroft, " Native Races," i. p. 248. 



* Wuttke, 734. 



| Bancroft, i, p. 360. 



A Gray, "China," i, pp. 278-280; Klemm, ii, pp. 104, 221, 225; id. iv, p. 38; Mar- 

 shall, "Travels among the Todas," p. 171. 



Q Klemm, ii, p. 297 ; Bastian, ii, p. 328 ; Marco Polo, i, c. 40 ; Waitz, " Anthropolo- 

 gic," ii, p. 195; id., iii, p. 202; Chalmers and Gill, "New Guinea," p. 56. 



X Wuttke, 739 ; Toppen, p. 109. 



X Meiners, " Geschichte der Religionen," ii, p. 303. 



