the finest linen (observe again the care that it should be fine (C. R., b. ii. ch. 8). At a certain Hindu festival described by Wilson, a goddess named Varadá Chaturthi "is worshipped with offerings of flowers, of incense, or of lights, with platters of sugar and ginger, or milk or salt, with scarlet or saffron-tinted strings and golden bracelets" (W. W., vol. ii. pp. 184, 185). Among the Parsees the sacrifices consist of little loaves of bread, and of Haoma, the sacred plant. The Indian Parsees send from time to time to Kirman to obtain Haoma-branches from this holy territory (Z. A., vol. ii. p. 535). The Parsees also offer flowers, fruits, rice, odoriferous grains, perfumes, milk, roots of certain trees, and meat. The Jews, like them, offered the productions of the soil in sacrifice.
Beauty, and even utility, when not accompanied by considerable value in exchange, do not suffice to constitute fitness for religious sacrifice. Common plants and shrubs, branches of trees, wild birds or insects, are some of them among the most beautiful productions of nature; yet they are not sacrificed. Stones and wood are both useful, but they are obtained, as a rule, at little cost; and they are not sacrificed. Flowers, which certainly have no high value, were sometimes offered to idols in the form of wreaths and garlands: they scarcely constitute an exception to the rule, for they are prized as ornaments by men, and the process of plucking and weaving them into appropriate shapes imposes trouble—the equivalent of cost—on the devotee. It is plainly not owing to any accidental circumstance that highly valuable objects have been selected by all the nations of the earth as alone appropriate for religious sacrifice. Two reasons may be assigned for this selection. In the first place, the general assimilation of deities to mankind goes far to account for it. Everywhere, and at all times—as we shall have occasion frequently to observe in this work—men have reasoned as to the divine nature from their knowledge of their own. A noteworthy instance of this is to be seen in Malachi, who does not scruple to tell the Jews that their God feels the same kind of offense at the poverty of their offerings as a human governor would do. "And if," says that prophet, "ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor;
