umbilicus." As they went along with this food they shouted out a sort of military exhortation to the new-born boy, and called upon the soldiers to come and eat the (so-called) umbilicus. All being over, the infant was carried back to the house, preceded by the blazing torch. Much the same was the process of baptizing a girl, except that the clothes and implements were suited to her sex. In her case, certain formularies were muttered by the midwife during the washing, in a low, inaudible tone, to the several parts of her body: thus she charged the hands not to steal, the secret parts not to be carnal, and so forth with each member as she washed it. Moreover, a prayer to the cradle, which seems in a manner to personify the universal mother earth, was introduced in the baptism of females (C. N. E. b. 6, chs. 37, 38).
If from heathen America we turn to Asia, we find that in the vast domain of the Buddhist faith the birth of children is regularly the occasion of a ceremony at which the priest is present (R. B. vol. i. p. 584,) and that in Mongolia and Thibet this ceremony assumes the special form of baptism. Candles burn, and incense is offered on the domestic altar; the priest reads the prescribed prayers, dips the child three times, and imposes on it a name (R. B. vol. ii. p. 320). A species of baptism prevails also among the Parsees, and was even enjoined by the Parsee Leviticus, the Vendidad. This very ancient code required that the child's hands should be washed first, and then its whole body (Av. vol. ii. p. xix—Vendidad, xvi. 18-20). The modern practice goes further. Before putting it to the breast, the Parsee mother sends to a Mobed (or priest), to obtain some Haoma juice; she steeps some cotton in it, and presses this into the child's mouth. After this, it must be washed three times in cow's urine, and once in water, the reason assigned being that it is impure. If the washing be omitted, it is the parents, not the child, who bear the sin (Z. A., vol. ii. p. 551).
Slightly different in form, but altogether similar in essence, is the rite administered by the Christian Church to its new-born members. Like those which have been just described, it consists in baptism; but it offers a more remarkable instance than any of them of the tenacity with which the human mind, under the influence of religious belief, insists upon the performance
