But the infant will receive attentions of a ritual or magical nature, likewise from his mother and her household. He is placed on a cradle board in which, near the position of his heart, a bit of turquoise is inlaid to preclude the cradle bringing any harm to its tenant. Left alone, a baby runs great risk—some family ghost may come and hold him, causing him to die within four days. And so a quasi-fetichistic ear of corn, a double ear thought of as mother and child, is left alongside the baby as a protector. That the baby may teethe promptly, his gums may be rubbed by one who has been bitten by a snake—“snakes want to bite.” To make the child’s hair grow long and thick, his grandfather or uncle may puff the smoke of native tobacco on his head. That the child may not be afraid in the dark, water-soaked embers are rubbed over his heart the first time he is taken out at night—judging from what I have seen of Zuñi children and adults a quite ineffectual method. That the child may keep well and walk early, hairs from a deer are burned, and the child held over the smoke—deer are never sick, and rapid is their gait. Their hearing, too, is acute, so discharge from a deer’s ear will be put into the baby’s ear. That the child may talk well and with tongues, the tongue of a snared mocking bird may be cut out and held to the baby to lick. The bird will then be released in order that, as it regains its tongue and “talks,” the child will talk. A youth who speaks in addition to his native tongue Keresan, English and Spanish, has been pointed out to me as one who had licked mocking bird tongue.