mony of naming the child is over, and that
the pot containing the placenta is waved over the head of the child
before it is removed and hung up in a tree.

Dr. Fraser, at page 53 _et seq_. of the "Golden Bough," when dealing
with the subject of sympathetic magic, refers to the navel string
and the placenta as parts which are commonly believed amongst certain
people to remain in sympathetic union with the body after the physical
connection has been severed, and it is interesting to note that in
the Babar Archipelago, between New Guinea and Celebes, the placenta
is mixed with ashes and put in a small basket, which seven women,
each of them armed with a sword, hang up on a tree of a peculiar kind
(_citrus hystrix_). The women carry the swords for the purpose of
frightening the evil spirits, otherwise the latter might get hold of
the placenta and make the child sick. Mr. C. M. Pleyte, Lecturer on
Indonesian Ethnology, at the Gymnasium William III at Batavia, who has
most courteously furnished me with some interesting information on this
subject, states that it is especially in the Southern Moluccas that the
placenta is mixed with ashes and hung in a tree. Wider spread is the
custom of placing the after-birth on a small bamboo raft in a river
"in order that it may be caught by crocodiles, incarnations of the
ancestors, who will guard it till the person to whom it has belonged
dies. Then the soul of the placenta is once more united with that of
the dead man, and together they go to the realms of the dead. During
lifetime the connection between men and their placentas is never
withdrawn." The Khasis, although they cannot explain the meaning of
the presence of the placenta at the naming ceremony, and the care with
which they remove it and hang it up in a tree, are probably really
actuated by the same sentiments as the inhabitants of the Southern
Moluccas, i.e. they believe that there is, as Dr. Fraser puts it,
a sympathetic union with the body after the physical connection with
the child has been severed. There is no fixed period of _sang_, or
taboo, after a birth, but the parents of the child are prohibited
by custom from crossing a stream or washing their clothes until the
navel-string falls off, for fear that the child should be attacked
by the demons of the hills and the vales.

The War birth customs are substantially the same as those of the
Khasis, but there is the difference that a War family after a birth
is _sang_, o