they were kept burning all the year, and it was an ill omen if the holy flame went out.[328] At a festival held in the last month of the old Mexican year all the fires both in the temples and in the houses were extinguished, and the priest kindled a new fire by rubbing two sticks against each other before the image of the fire-god.[329] The Zuni Indians of New Mexico kindle a new fire by the friction of wood both at the winter and the summer solstice.  At the winter solstice the chosen fire-maker collects a faggot of cedar-wood from every house in the village, and each person, as he hands the wood to the fire-maker, prays that the crops may be good in the coming year.  For several days before the new fire is kindled, no ashes or sweepings may be removed from the houses and no artificial light may appear outside of them, not even a burning cigarette or the flash of firearms.  The Indians believe that no rain will fall on the fields of the man outside whose house a light has been seen at this season.  The signal for kindling the new fire is given by the rising of the Morning Star.  The flame is produced by twirling an upright stick between the hands on a horizontal stick laid on the floor of a sacred chamber, the sparks being caught by a tinder of cedar-dust.  It is forbidden to blow up the smouldering tinder with the breath, for that would offend the gods.  After the fire has thus been ceremonially kindled, the women and girls of all the families in the village clean out their houses.  They carry the sweepings and ashes in baskets or bowls to the fields and leave them there.  To the sweepings the woman says:  “I now deposit you as sweepings, but in one year you will return to me as corn.”  And to the ashes she says:  “I now deposit you as ashes, but in one year you will return to me as meal.”  At the summer solstice the sacred fire which has been procured by the friction of wood is used to kindle the grass and trees, that there may be a great cloud of smoke, while bull-roarers are swung and prayers offered that the Rain-makers up aloft will water the earth.[330] From this account we see how intimately the kindling of a new fire at the two turning-points of the sun’s course is associated in the minds of these Indians with the fertility of the land, particularly with the growth of the corn.  The rolling smoke is apparently an imitation of rain-clouds designed, on the principle of homoeopathic magic, to draw showers from the blue sky.  Once a year the Iroquois priesthood supplied the people with a new fire.  As a preparation for the annual rite the fires in all the huts were extinguished and the ashes scattered about.  Then the priest, wearing the insignia of his office, went from hut to hut relighting the fires by means of a flint.[331] Among the Esquimaux with whom C.F.  Hall resided, it was the custom that at a certain time, which answered to our New Year’s Day, two men went about from house to house blowing out every light in the village.  One of the men was