yams. A special type of yam is secured, and
cooked with much ceremony under fixed rules, much care and secrecy being
observed throughout. After the cooking ceremony is finished, the yams
are cut up and divided among the various members of the tribe. The
ceremony is supposed to increase the supply of yams. Miss J.
Harrison[32] in interpreting Australian ceremonies states: "The
primitive Australian takes care that magic shall not be wanting, a magic
of the most instructive kind. As soon as the season of fertility
approaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and
multiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he
paints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermillion drawn from his
own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him in stupid
fashion, like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the
chrysalis of a Witchetty grub--his favorite food, and drags his body
through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth.
Here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain
in meaning as many of the details must always probably remain, the main
emotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and
admires the miracle of his Spring, the bursting of the flowers and the
singing of the birds; it is not that his heart goes out in gratitude to
All-Father who is the Giver of all good things; it is that, obedient to
the push of life within him his impulse is towards food. He must eat
that he and his tribe may grow and multiply. It is this, his will to
live, that he _utters and represents_."

In a monograph[33] of the Shinto religion of the Japanese, R. Hitchcock
states that the leading function of the female deity is to increase the
food supply. She is given the name of the Goddess of Food, or the
Producer of Trees and the Parent of Grasses. She is spoken of as
Abundant-Food-Lady, and seems to be a personification of the earth.

A further description of these rites is unnecessary, as wherever found
they are all of the same general type. They have been described in
North America, in Central Africa, in Japan, in Siberia, in India and
they probably exist in many other localities. The above references
indicate that they were primitive man's expression of his desire for
food, this fundamental motive finding expression in an elaborate ritual.

Now since in the above rites, where the increase of the food supply is
the main motive, the ent