osts of the dead.]

But it would be a mistake to imagine that the ghosts of the dead are a
source of danger, annoyance, and discomfort, and nothing more. That is
not so. They may and do render the Kai the most material services in
everyday life, particularly by promoting the supply of food both
vegetable and animal. I have said that these practical savages stand
towards their departed kinsfolk on a strictly commercial footing; and I
will now illustrate the benefits which the Kai hope to receive from the
ghosts in return for all the respect and attention lavished on them. In
the first place, then, so long as a ghost remains in the neighbourhood
of the village, it is expected of him that he shall make the crops
thrive and neither tread them down himself nor allow wild pigs to do so.
The expectation is reasonable, yet the conduct of the ghost does not
always answer to it. Occasionally, whether out of sheer perverseness or
simple absence of mind, he will sit down in a field; and wherever he
does so, he makes a hollow where the fruits will not grow. Indeed any
fruit that he even touches with his foot in passing, shrivels up. Where
these things have happened, the people offer boiled taro and a few crabs
to the ghosts to induce them to keep clear of the crops and to repose
their weary limbs elsewhere than in the tilled fields.[461]

[Sidenote: Ghosts help Kai hunters to kill game.]

But the most important service which the dead render to the living is
the good luck which they vouchsafe to hunters. Hence in order to assure
himself of the favour of the dead the hunter hangs his nets on a grave
before he uses them. If a man was a good and successful hunter in his
lifetime, his ghost will naturally be more than usually able to assist
his brethren in the craft after his death. For that reason when such a
man has just died, the people, to adopt a familiar proverb, hasten to
make hay while the sun shines by hunting very frequently, in the
confident expectation of receiving ghostly help from the deceased
hunter. In the evening, when they return from the chase, they lay a
small portion of their bag near his grave, scatter a powder which
possesses the special virtue of attracting ghosts, and call out,
"So-and-so, come and eat; here I set down food for you, it is a part of
all we have." If after such an offering and invocation the night wind
rustles the tops of the trees or shakes the thatch of leaves on the
roofs, they know that the g