PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 615 
related to him; it should be rather said, perhaps, that her fancy 
connects him with some class of objects, all of which he equally 
regards. If it be convenient to call that object a Totem, the 
word must be used with the understanding that no family or tribe 
mark is meant, and that the origin of the connection is in the 
fancy of a mother. If the creature with which the Banks’ 
Islander believes himself somehow to be connected in the origin 
of his life is different from this, it is only that the connection 
starts from a fancy conceived by himself or suggested by another ; 
the connection is with the single life of the individual man—there 
is no true Totem. The case of the forbidden food of the Florida 
clans comes very much nearer to a case of Totemism, though Mr. 
Frazer's definitions are by no means satisfactory ; but the Florida 
practice is explained by that of Ulawa and Malomba. The fact 
that the members of each clan abstain from eating something, or 
more than one thing, which represents to them some ancestor, 
can be accounted for on the supposition that such an ancestor 
himself associated his memory with that object. It is, indeed, 
difficult to believe that any people could seriously think them- 
selves the offspring, however remotely, of a clam or a crab or a 
banana ; the statement that they make, however, means not that 
a banana was their ancestor, but that their ancestor is a banana. 
I conclude, therefore, that to arrange certain Melanesian customs 
according to a system of Totemism is not difficult, but that to 
examine them and find true Totems is not easy. It may be that 
customs in other parts of the world which have been set down to 
Totemism have been too hastily so characterised ; or it may be 
that the definition of what constitutes a Totem will have to be so 
altered as to carry the application of the name very far away 
from that to which it originally and properly belonged. In that 
case it may be doubtful whether the large use now made of the 
words Totem and Totemism has been happily begun. In any 
case these Melanesian examples may be useful, as showing how 
what really are Totems may have arisen ; they throw some light 
upon that condition of the uncivilised mind in which it seems to 
be natural to men to conceive some special relation to exist 
between themselves and some object with which they have no 
physical connection. 
3.—THE AINUS OF NORTH JAPAN. 
By Proressor ODLUM. 
