In Australia, according to Mueller as quoted by Ploss and Bartels, marriage and conception take place during the warm season, when there is greatest abundance of food, and to some extent is even confined to that period.  Oldfield and others state that the Australian erotic festivals take place only in spring.  Among some tribes, Mueller adds, such as the Watschandis, conception is inaugurated by a festival called kaaro, which takes place in the warm season at the first new moon after the yams are ripe.  The leading feature of this festival is a moonlight dance, representing the sexual act symbolically.  With their spears, regarded as the symbols of the male organ, the men attack bushes, which represent the female organs.  They thus work themselves up to a state of extreme sexual excitement.[131] Among the Papuans of New Guinea, also, according to Miklucho-Macleay, conceptions chiefly occur at the end of harvest, and Guise describes the great annual festival of the year which takes place at the time of the yam and banana harvest, when the girls undergo a ceremony of initiation and marriages are effected.[132] In Central Africa, says Sir H.H.  Johnston, in his Central Africa, sexual orgies are seriously entered into at certain seasons of the year, but he neglects to mention what these seasons are.  The people of New Britain, according to Weisser (as quoted by Ploss and Bartels), carefully guard their young girls from the young men.  At certain times, however, a loud trumpet is blown in the evening, and the girls are then allowed to go away into the bush to mix freely with the young men.  In ancient Peru (according to an account derived from a pastoral letter of Archbishop Villagomez of Lima), in December, when the fruit of the paltay is ripe, a festival was held, preceded by a five days’ fast.  During the festival, which lasted six days and six nights, men and women met together in a state of complete nudity at a certain spot among the gardens, and all raced toward a certain hill.  Every man who caught up with a woman in the race was bound at once to have intercourse with her.

Very instructive, from our present point of view, is the account given by Dalton, of the festivals of the various Bengal races.  Thus the Hos (a Kolarian tribe), of Bengal, are a purely agricultural people, and the chief festival of the year with them is the magh parah.  It is held in the month of January, “when the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own expression, full of devilry.”  It is the festival of the harvest-home, the termination of the year’s toil, and is always held at full moon.  The festival is a saturnalia, when all rules of duty and decorum are forgotten, and the utmost liberty is allowed to women and girls, who become like bacchantes.  The people believe that at this time both men and women become overcharged with vitality, and that a safety valve is absolutely necessary.  The festival begins with a religious sacrifice made by the village