BOURKE. ] USE OF POLLEN. le 
Higgins says: **The flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the 
Xpys or Ceres in the Exyiprazia.” | 
What relation these powders have had to the ‘“‘carnestolendas” of 
the Spanish and Portuguese, already alluded to, and the throwing of 
“confetti” by the Italians, which is a modification, it would be hard to 
say. Some relation would appear to be suggested. 
USE OF POLLEN BY THE ISRAELITES AND EGYPTIANS. 
There are some suggestions of a former use of pollen among the 
Israelites and Egyptians. 
Manna, which we are assured was at one time a source of food to 
the Hebrews, was afterward retained as an offering in the temples. 
Forlong, however, denies that it ever could have entered into general 
consumption. He says: 
Manna, as food, is an absurdity, but we have the well-known produce of the desert 
oak or ash—Fraxinus. . . . . An omer of this was precious, and in this 
quantity, at the spring season, not difficult to get; it was a specially fit tribute to 
be “laid up” before any Phallic Jah, as it was the pollen of the tree of Jove and of 
Life, and in this sense the tribe lived spiritually on such ‘‘spiritual manna” as this 
god supplied or was supplied with.? 
The detestation in which the bean was held by the high-caste people 
of Egypt does not demonstrate that the bean was not an article of food 
to a large part of the population, any more than the equal detestation 
of the occupation of swineherd would prove that none of the poor 
made use of swine’s flesh. The priesthood of Egypt were evidently 
exerting themselves to stamp out the use of a food once very common 
among their people, and to supersede it with wheat or some other 
cereal. They held a man accursed who in passing through a field 
planted with beans had his clothing soiled with their pollen. Speke 
must have encountered a survival of this idea when he observed in 
equatorial Africa, near the sources of the Nile, and among people whose 
features proclaimed their Abyssinian origin, the very same aversion. 
He was unable to buy food, simply because he and some of his followers 
had eaten ‘the bean called maharagté.” Such a man, the natives 
believed, “if he tasted the products of their cows, would destroy their 
cattle.”* 
One other point should be dwelt upon in describing the kunque of 
the Zuni, Tusayan, and other Pueblos. It is placed upon one of the 
sacred flat baskets and packed down in such a manner that it takes 
the form of one of the old-fashioned elongated cylindro-conical cheeses. 
It should be noted also that by something more than a coincidence this 
form was adhered to by the peoples farther to the south when they ar- 
ranged their sacred meal upon baskets. 
At the festival of the god Teutleco the Aztecs made “de harina de 
! Anacalypsis, vol. 2, p. 244. 
2Rivers of Life, vol. 1, p. 161. 
3Source of the Nile, London, 1864, pp. 205, 208. 
