408 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



he will find that the native can readily give him the name of every 

 tree, plant, flower, animal, bird, or insect, about which he may 

 make inquiries, and in most cases he will, even if only a boy, give 

 him the life-history of the plant and a full description of the life 

 and habits of the animal. I have lived among natives for many 

 years and I have never even heard of any doubt whatever as to 

 the connection of pregnancy with sexual intercourse. I landed in 

 New Britain when there was not a single white man resident in 

 any part of that large group, and the people were not in any way 

 affected by foreign ideas or influence, and I feel certain that either 

 I or those who were afterwards associated with me would have 

 known if such ignorance existed, or if the people had ever held 

 such a belief. In the case of the Samoans also their genealogies as 

 carefully preserved by them recognise the action of the male in the 

 production of offspring as clearly as do the writers in the fifth 

 chapter of Genesis and the first chapter of St. Matthew's gospel. 

 They profess indeed to narrate the story of the origin of man and 

 to give the genealogies of their kings and princes from the first man. 

 These genealogies always take the form of married couples and 

 their progeny. A long list of them will be found in " Samoa " by 

 Dr. Turner (p. 4). Whatever value may be attached to these 

 traditions it is certain that they are very old and that there is no 

 trace in them of any ignorance in the far past " of the part played 

 by the male in the generation of offspring." 



With regard to the Central and Northern Australian tribes it 

 is, I think, quite true that many of them believe that a spirit-child 

 from some of the places at which the spirits of the dead are waiting 

 to be born again enters into a woman's womb at the time when she 

 first feels it quickened ; but this does not, I think, necessarily 

 imply that they were ignorant of the true cause of child-birth, for 

 the belief that a totemic spirit enters the womb at that critical time 

 may be consistently held together with an accurate conception of 

 the true cause of pregnancy. It is a well-known fact that nearly 

 all sacred places are forbidden to women except, among some 

 peoples, on very rare occasions and for a very limited time, when 

 some ceremonies are being performed, and a woman would cer- 

 tainly be very much afraid to go near any of those sacred places, 

 which were supposed to be haunted or tenanted by the spirits of 

 kangaroo or emu people, unless there was some compelling reason 

 for doing so. That reason, in my opinion, would be that, knowing 

 herself to be pregnant (as all women do) she went to the sacred 

 place in order that the totem of her child might be fixed by the 

 entering in to her of a spirit of one of the kangaroo, emu, or other 

 peoples which congregated at that place, and that if she felt the 

 quickening of the child in her womb whilst she was there she knew 

 that the object of her visit was accomplished. The fact of the 

 woman going to one of those sacred places instead of carefully 

 avoiding it does not, in my opinion, show that she was in any 

 ignorance of the part played by the male and its resultant conse- 

 ouences, jbut that being conscious of those consequences in her 



