Zoological Names and Theories of the Malays. 453 



nest, and wanders forth at night in search of food, burning a 

 path in the grass wherever it goes. To catch it,^ one must 

 dig a hole in its path before it returns, and place a Chinese 

 teacup in the hole : it will fall into the pit, and be unable to 

 recover itself. If it is kept shut up with grains of raw rice 

 it will grow harder and harder, feeding meanwhile on the 

 rice, until it becomes a stone. In this state it is considered 

 a very powerful charm. I bought a specimen in Kelantan 

 for a dollar : it was a little round pebble of quartz, and was 

 said to have been dug out of a termite-hill in Legeh by the 

 son of a penghulu or headman. As a matter of fact, the 

 queen termites are very difficult to find after they have once 

 founded a colony, though in their winged state they are 

 sometimes very numerous ; I have demolished many nests 

 without discovering the royal chamber on more than one 

 occasion. Becoming enormously distended with eggs, the 

 female white ants are sluggish in their movements, and 

 almost translucent in colour; indeed, their appearance is 

 not altogether unlike that of a piece of clouded quartz. 

 Apparently the Malays consider that they become hardened 

 into stone by feeding on the hard rice grains. The rice 

 enclosed with the specimen I bought in Kelantan was all 

 nibbled, as if by some small animal ; perhaps, in reality, by 

 the Perak trader who sold it to me. There was no doubt, 

 however, that many of the natives really believed the story, 

 as I only discovered by chance that the trader had the 

 specimen. 



Many animals are believed by the Malays to have origi- 

 nated from human beings : for example, the deer 2 is said to 

 have once been a man who died of ulcers, the marks of which 

 can still be seen upon its legs. Such transformations are 

 usually attributed to the larger mammals and birds, but the 

 legend of the stick-insect ^ may be taken as typical of this 

 class. Once upon a time a woman was cooking yams. Her 

 husband replaced these yams by stones, and went off to 



^ Oxford Magazine, October 24, 1900. 



2 "Malay Magic," p. 171. 



3 *♦ Malay Magic," p. 200. 



