i 9 3 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ent state. The Indians did not gain such, a conservative bond, 

 and the alliances of their tribes were more loose and transient. 



The characteristics of the Israelite and of the Indian, as of the 

 Homeric Achseans and of the extant Bedouins, were predatory. 

 The tribe and its clans, with their occasional allies, went forth 

 against the rest of the world. 



In the investigation of totemism among the Israelites it is im- 

 portant to observe its continued existence in Arabia, because the 

 state of society there still remains more primitive than that preva- 

 lent in the land of Israel even at the time of imposing antiquity 

 when the Old Testament was written. 



A large number of tribes having animal names are still found 

 among the Arabs. Some of these tribal names are Lion, Wolf, 

 Ibex, She-fox, Dog, Bull, Ass, Hyena, and Lizard. The origin of 

 all these names is referred by the people to an ancestor who bore 

 the tribal or gentile name. The animal names given in the tribal 

 genealogies are also often found belonging to sub-tribes, the same 

 animal name sometimes occurring in subdivisions of different 

 tribes. These particulars correspond with the Indian clan system. 



The tribes of the southern and eastern parts of Canaan had 

 affinities both to Israel and to the Arabs. The Arab princes of 

 Midian were The Raven and The Wolf heads of tribes of the 

 same names. More than one third of the Horites, the descendants 

 of Seir the He-goat, bear animal names ; so do the clans of the 

 Edomites. The real name of Moses's father-in-law is in dispute, 

 but he had some connection with the Kenites. The list in Gene- 

 sis xxxvi is a count of tribal or local divisions and not a literal 

 genealogy. It is full of animal names. The Antelope stock was 

 divided over the nation in a way only to be explained on the to- 

 temic and not on a genealogic system. The same names of totem 

 tribes that appear in Arabia, reach through Edom, Midian, and 

 Moab into Canaan, where they show local distribution, which is 

 intelligible only on the assumption that the totemic system pre- 

 vailed there also when the first books of the Old Testament were 

 written. 



Prof. Robertson Smith gives a select list of about thirty per- 

 sons and towns in point, bearing names derived from animals and 

 plants. Dr. Joseph Jacobs has expanded that list into a hundred 

 and sixty such names, though he considers their importance to be 

 lessened by the frequency of such names in England, forgetting, 

 apparently, that the clan system also existed among the ancestors 

 of the English people. 



The twenty-sixth chapter of Numbers gives the clans of the 

 Israelite tribes. Altogether seventy-two clans are mentioned, and 

 of these at least ten occur in two tribes, among which the Arodites 

 or Wild Ass clan, found both in Gad and in Benjamin, should be 



