52 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



our heifer's throat, to make her take the beast.' ' In the 

 light of the instances already cited, and of the stories re- 

 counted in the previous chapter, we need have no doubt 

 that the live trout was originally not a mere aphrodisiac, 

 but taken in this way possessed real procreative power. 

 Among the Australian aborigines of Tully River, 

 in Northern Queensland, sexual intercourse is not 

 recognised as a cause of conception so far as they 

 themselves are concerned, though it is admitted in the 

 case of the lower animals and is a mark of the inferiority 

 of the latter. They hold that a woman bears children 

 because she has been sitting over a fire on which 

 she has roasted a particular species of black bream, 

 which must have been given to her by the prospective 

 11 father " ; or because she has purposely gone a- 

 hunting and has caught a certain kind of bull-frog. 

 Though we are not told what she does with the 

 creature we may assume that she eats it, since little 

 comes amiss to an Australian native in the shape of 

 animal food, unless there be any taboo upon it. It may 

 be added that a third cause assigned for a woman's 

 conception is that " some man may have told her to 

 be in an interesting condition," just as the Lucky 

 Fool does in the stories referred to in the previous 

 chapter. Twins are accounted for by her having 

 dreamed of being told by two different persons to 

 conceive. A fourth cause is that she may have 

 dreamed of having the child put inside her, pre- 

 sumably by a supernatural being. 1 The Ottoman Jews 



1 Roth, N. Q. Ethnog. Bull. v. 22 (par. 81); 25 (par. 92). 

 According to Strehlow the Arunta share the belief of the Tully River 

 tribe in the distinction between the mode of propagation of human 

 beings and that of the lower animals (Strehlow, ii. 52). 



