i5o PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



spoke of a preadamite race consisting entirely of 

 women who conceived (daughters only) by the v ind, 

 and as I have already said of an Isle of Women thus 

 peopled. 1 If the inhabitants of the district of Lampong, 

 in the island of Sumatra, be not maligned, they at the 

 beginning of the present century believed all the popu- 

 lation on the neighbouring island of Engano to be 

 females who were impregnated in the same manner. 2 

 The Arunta of Central Australia still hold that a storm 

 from the west sometimes brings evil ratapa, or child- 

 germs, that seek to enter women. As the storm 

 approaches, the women with a loud cry hasten to 

 huddle themselves up in the shelter of their rudi- 

 mentary huts; for if they become thus impregnated 1 

 twins will be the result, and they will die shortly after 

 delivery. The first-born twin is the evil ratapa; 

 This belief is adduced to justify the murder of twins. 3 

 The ancient nations of the Mediterranean basin, 

 accomplished as they were in the arts of life, had 

 imbibed very little of the true scientific spirit that 

 searches out the facts of nature, whether in immediate 

 relation to themselves or not. They were (individual 

 exceptions apart) content to accept a wonder upon 

 authority without inquiring into the evidence, the 

 antecedent improbability awakening hardly more 

 doubts in their minds than in those of savages or 

 mediaeval monks. The statements just cited of the 

 sexual intercourse of partridges and the fertilisation of 

 Lusitanian mares are of a piece with other beliefs 

 which they took no pains to verify. They would not 



1 L'Abrege des Merveilles, 17, 71. 



2 Marsden, 297. Yule, Marco Polo, ii. 340, cites other cases. 

 8 Strehlow, 14. 



