ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM, ETC. 413 



opinion, any sufficient reason for the existence of totemism — that 

 is, it does not show how or why primitive men would regard their 

 identification with groups of things as being either advantageous 

 or necessary, and yet these are the motives which principally 

 govern their actions. It does not also explain or account for the 

 belief in totemic spirits, their power to enter women, and the power 

 of the women to receive them. 



8. That any satisfactory theory of the origin of totemism must 

 be one which can be applied to the case of all totemic peoples and 

 that the conceptional theory fails when it is applied to totemism 

 among peoples living in very different conditions to those in which 

 the Central Australian tribes live. 



9. That natives are close observers of nature ; that the fact of 

 a woman's going to a sacred place is capable of quite another, and 

 more satisfactory, explanation ; that the reasons given for the 

 astonishing ignorance of the Arunta natives would not apply to 

 peoples who are accustomed to the long periods of the gestation of 

 the higher mammals ; that, so far as we know, there are few, if any, 

 other peoples who are ignorant of the physical process by which 

 men and animals reproduce their kinds ; and that it is a very 

 general belief among women that certain medicines, or other means, 

 will prevent conception. 



10. That I therefore do not regard the conceptional theory of 

 the origin of totemism as accounting in a satisfactory manner for 

 all the facts of the case ; that I believe the beliefs, or rather the 

 ignorance, of the Arunta people to be quite abnormal, and that they 

 are due almost entirely to the state in which they lived, and to the 

 arrested and incomplete development of the people from individual 

 to hereditary totemism. 



II.— DOBUAN (PAPUA) BELIEFS AND FOLK-LORE. 

 By REVD. W. E. BROMILOW, D.D., Sydney. 



The difficulties in obtaining a full and complete account of the folk- 

 lore of a people like the Papuans are very great. First of all, 

 prejudice against foreigners has to be overcome. The natives, for 

 instance, are bound by custom not to allow a stranger to live 

 amongst them. Short visits could be made (the shorter the safer 

 the first time), but unless it was decided to adopt the stranger into 

 the tribe, he was never allowed to remain. 



Considerable persuasion is needed to overcome this difficulty, 

 and the risk to life is not slight. Then it is a long and tedious task 

 to establish confidence and so not remain a complete outsider, 

 though living amongst the people, and meeting them every day. 



Further, as a missionary becomes familiar with the language 

 and habits of those whom he wishes to influence, he finds there is 



