76 FISHES OF FANCY. 



reverence the things in fur, feathers, and scales as their 

 superiors. 



The Red Indian calls them his " younger brothers," and 

 though compelled to eat them, he does so with apologies. 

 He excuses himself for the painful necessity of making a 

 meal off his " dear cousin " ; deprecates the anger of the 

 eaten thing's relations by formulas of propitiation, and 

 hopes by posthumous ceremonials of respect to the skull 

 and bones and skin, to condone the consumption of the 

 meat and fat. This is all, no doubt, grotesque enough, 

 but it is very much like meeting a megatherium in a 

 country lane. One begins to feel the clothes slipping off 

 one's back. The fingers itch to chip flints. Time seems 

 to wheel backwards through the intervening cycles, and 

 we are again the contemporaries of primitive man. In 

 this savage theology, this zoolatry, that sees divinity itself 

 — or emanations from divinities, or symbols of divinity — 

 in the beast-world, the fishes afford a very interesting study. 

 Throughout the Pacific, modern folk-lore is still the same 

 clan-animal worship that I have referred to in Chapter III. 

 The fish are lords of the sea. In the Tongan, Fiji, 

 and other groups of islands, reverence for the whale and 

 shark, eel and sun-fish, and many another creature of the 

 waters, influences the daily life of the people, controls their 

 habits, and colours their thought. Among tutelary spirits 

 — the " aitu " of the Samoans, the " atua " of New Zealand — 

 we find all the larger and more dangerous fishes ; and just 

 as in the Far West we find fish among the medicine- 

 animals and the totems of the Red Man, so in South Africa 

 we have " The Fishes " tribe of the Bechuana, the Batlapi ; 

 and among the tutelary " Kobongs " of the Australian 

 savage are numerous fish. And with these, their habits, 

 predilections, and potencies, the modern folk-lore of these 



