 The death of Adonis – "a vegetation spirit who...was manifest in the seed of corn" – was marked by "the most beautiful of Phoenician festivals...celebrated immediately after the harvest".Durkheim explored Australian ceremonies "to assure the prosperity of the animal or vegetable species serving the clan as totem".Such ceremonies took the form both of "oblations, whether bloody or otherwise", and of "rites which...consist in movements and cries whose object is to imitate the different aspects and attitudes of the animal whose reproduction is desired".