PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 53 



prescribe for a woman who has only given birth to 

 daughters, and who desires also sons, to eat after 

 taking a bath a whole cock, intestines, comb and all : l 

 a prescription which would seem to make rather an 

 exorbitant demand on her appetite and digestion. 

 The Ainu of Japan persist in regarding the flying 

 squirrel as a bird. It is called At kamui, a name 

 said to mean " the divine prolific one," for it is believed 

 to produce as many as thirty young at a birth, When 

 a woman has no children her husband is advised to 

 hunt for one of these " birds." Having caught it 

 he cuts it up, cooks it, and offers inao (willow wands, 

 whittled, with the shavings still attached) to the head 

 and skin, and prays: " O thou very prolific one, 

 I have sacrificed thee for one reason only, and that 

 is that I may use thy flesh as a medicine for procuring 

 children. Henceforth, please cause my wife to bear 

 me a child." He is then to take the flesh and give it 

 to his wife to eat, telling her that it is the flesh of 

 some kind of bird, but carefully concealing the fact 

 that it is that of a flying squirrel ; for if she know, 

 or even guess, what it is the ceremony would be 

 useless, and she would bear no children. 2 



Barren women among the Thompson Indians of 

 British Columbia ate a roasted mouse of a certain 

 species. An alternative prescription where male chil- 

 dren were desired was a buck's penis. 3 The ancient 

 Prussian bride having been struck and beaten, and so 



1 Mel. viii. 270. 



2 Batchelor, Ainu F. L. 339. The inao were perhaps phallic 

 emblems in origin, though apparently this significance is not now 

 attached to them by the Ainu (Aston, Shinfo, 193). 



Teit, in Mem. Am. Mus., Anthrop. i. 509. 



