614 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
to have some connection with that creature, has no hesitation in 
eating it, and does not regard it as its origin. The octopus, 
therefore, is not the Totem of the octopus family. A closer 
acquaintance with the Florida customs raises many difficulties. 
It is true that the crab clan does not eat the crab, but the clan 
named after the fish-hawk has no objections whatever to eating 
that bird, and does not eat the pigeon ; the crab clan, also, is as 
careful not to eat one kind of parrot as it is to avoid the kind of 
crab from which it takes its name. Moreover, only two clans out 
of six are named after living creatures ; and there is good reason 
to believe that the practice of prohibiting some one or more things 
to all the members of a clan is very much later that the forma- 
tion of these clans in their present shape. Men alive in Ysabel, 
very close to Florida, within the last few years could remember 
when these prohibitions were introduced among themselves, and 
knew from what quarter they were introduced. Again, it is 
most important to observe that the worship of the people in the 
Solomon Islands is directed to those who may be called, though 
hardly in the common sense of the word, their ancestors, that is, 
to such of their deceased predecessors as are believed to be now 
potent in their disembodied state, whose names are known. When 
they speak of the crab, or the clam, as being ancestors, they mean 
not an ancestor whose name was crab or clam, but someone of a 
previous generation, now deceased, whose name is well remem- 
bered, who was a man, not a crab or clam, when alive, and now 
is disembodied as regards his human form, but is in some way 
embodied in one of those creatures. They do not in the least 
believe that a crab or a clam begat them or their fathers ; they 
do not in the least believe that the beings once embodied like 
themselves were ever anything but men, or that they are, when 
now disembodied, anything else than what they expect to be 
themselves after their decease, that is, ghosts. As, then, the crab, 
or clam, is not really an ancestor in the flesh, so the ancestor is 
not a god. 
The explanation of the Ulawa practice of rejecting bananas as 
food is happily at hand as a matter of history. A powerful man 
not long ago made it known before his death that after his 
decease he should be ina banana. The proof of the novelty of 
this prohibition was found in the abundance of bananas round the 
village, in which none were eaten. That, then, could not be a 
Totem which had but lately assumed its special character in con- 
sequence of the arbitrary selection of a well-remembered man, 
although it might well be that some native would explain the 
reason of his not eating bananas to be that his ancestor (rather, 
grandfather, great-uncle, &c.) was a banana. 
It appears, therefore, that in Melanesia a woman’s fancy before 
her child is born will sometimes connect her child with some 
object, which the child is taught afterwards to regard as closely 
