PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 55 



powder are given to women against barrenness. 1 

 Italian women are given not merely vegetable drugs 

 like an infusion of valerian, cypress scrapings and 

 the bark of the black mulberry, but also mare's milk, 

 a hare's uterus and a goat's testicles. 2 And similar 

 nostrums sometimes of the flesh of one animal and 

 sometimes of another are to be found in many of the 

 mediaeval works on medicine and exorcism. 3 



The same train of reasoning is evident in the prohibi- 

 tion, current among the Coast-Salish of north-western 

 America, to an unmarried woman to eat either breast 

 or tenderloin of any animal. It was believed that if 

 she ate the tenderloin of both sides of an animal she 

 would give birth to twins. 4 The Perak Semang are 

 said to hold a complicated belief in a soul-bird. A 

 child as soon as born is named from a tree standing 

 near its birthplace, and the after-birth is buried at the 

 foot of the tree. An expectant mother visits her birth- 

 tree, as it is called, or a tree of the same species if too 

 far away to reach the identical tree, and there deposits 

 an offering of flowers. A young bird newly hatched 

 inhabiting the tree contains the soul of her expected 

 child, which has been committed to it by Kari the chief 

 god. This bird she must kill and eat, otherwise her 

 child will be stillborn or die shortly after its birth. 

 The expression used by the Semang of Kalantan to 

 describe a woman who is in hope of offspring is : 

 " she has eaten the bird." Twins arise from eating a 



1 von Wlislocki, VolksgL Sieb. Sachs. 169, 103. 

 a Zanetti, 103. The author discredits the statement of another 

 prescription said to be given to couples desiring children. 

 3 Mil. vii. 159 sqq. 

 Boas, Rep. N. W. Tribes, Rep. B. A. 1889, 842. 



