The yearly rice farming is a matter of much ceremony as well as of labor with the Dayaks, and must be inaugurated with proper omens. Some man who is successful with his padi will be the augur and undertake to obtain omens for a certain area of land, which others besides himself will farm. Some time before the Pleiades are sufficiently high above the horizon to warrant the clearing the grounds of jungle or grass, the man sets about his work. He will have to hear the nendak (Cittocincla suavis) on the left, the katupong (Sasia abnormis) on the left, the burong malam (a locust) and the beragai (Harpactes duvauceli) on the left, and in the order I have written them. As soon as he has heard the nendak, he will break off a twig of anything growing near and take it home and put it in a safe place. But it may happen that some other omen bird, or creature, is the first to make itself heard or seen, and in that case the day's proceeding is vitiated; he must give the matter up, return and try his chance another day; and thus sometimes three or four days are gone before he has obtained his first omen. When he has heard the nendak, he will then go to listen for the katupong and the rest, but with the same liability to delays; and it may possibly require a month to obtain all those augural predictions, which are to give them confidence in the result of their labors. The augur has now the same number of twigs and sticks as birds he has heard, and he takes these to the land selected for farming and puts them