res occasionally, for various reasons, escape from the
control of those who are trying to make use of them, and become
wandering and aimless demons, as do some of those mentioned under the
previous heading under similar circumstances; but those that we are
considering, having much more intelligence and power, and a much
longer existence, are proportionately more dangerous. They invariably
seek for means of prolonging their life either by feeding like
vampires upon the vitality of human beings, or by influencing them to
make offerings to them; and among simple half-savage tribes they have
frequently succeeded by judicious management in getting themselves
recognized as village or family gods. Any deity which demands
sacrifices involving the shedding of blood may always be set down as
belonging to the lowest and most loathsome class of this order; other
less objectionable types are sometimes content with offerings of rice
and cooked food of various kinds. There are parts of India where both
these varieties may be found flourishing even at the present day, and
in Africa they are probably comparatively numerous. By means of
whatever nourishment they can obtain from the offerings, and still
more by the vitality they draw from their devotees, they may continue
to prolong their existence for many years, or even centuries,
retaining sufficient strength to perform occasional phenomena of a
mild type in order to stimulate the faith and zeal of their followers,
and invariably making themselves unpleasant in some way or other if
the accustomed sacrifices are neglected. For example, it was asserted
recently that in one Indian village the inhabitants had found that
whenever for any reason the local deity did not get his or her regular
meals, spontaneous fires began to break out with alarming frequency
among the cottages, sometimes three or four simultaneously, in cases
where they declared it was impossible to suspect human agency; and
other stories of a more or less similar nature will no doubt recur to
the memory of any reader who knows something of the out-of-the-way
corners of that most wonderful of all countries.

The art of manufacturing artificial elementals of extreme virulence
and power seems to have been one of the specialities of the magicians
of Atlantis--"the lords of the dark face". One example of their
capabilities in this line is given in _The Secret Doctrine_ (vol. ii.,
p. 427), where we read of the wonderful speaking