HEAD-HUNTING. The practice of head-hunting, although due partly to the acquisitive instinct, arises from a belief in the existence of a more or less material soul matter on which all life depends. In the case of human beings this soul matter, often, ap parently, in diminutive human form, is located particularly in the head. In abstracting a head the soul within is captured and thus added to the general stock of soul matter belonging to the com munity and so contributes to the fertility of the human popula tion, the cattle and the crops ; for the soul is conceived of, accord ing to the Karens of Burma at any rate, as a sort of pupa, filled with a vaporous substance which bursts, when its contents spread over and fertilize the fields, passing again through the grain or herb eaten into the bodies of men or animals and so again into the seminal fluid enabling men and animals to propagate life. While precisely the same formula cannot be postulated of all head hunters, head-hunting is generally based on a similar belief in a cycle of life dependent on the possession of soul (see METEMPSY