276 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



jsjvexed with her. When at night they hear a plover 

 crying out they will say : " Hallo ! there's a baby some- 

 where about." If a woman out hunting see a snake 

 of the species referred to she will run away ; her com- 

 panions will search for the creature possibly she 

 herself may join them and if it cannot be found they 

 know that it has reached its destination and the future 

 mother is pregnant. The Pennefather blacks hold 

 that babies are fashioned out of swamp-mud by a 

 supernatural being called Anjea and secretly inserted 

 in the women, who are unconscious of the fact at^ the 

 time. Thunder, who in the beginning formed Anjea 

 himself, also continues his procreative work in the 

 same manner and from the same material as the latter ; 

 but there is this difference between his workmanship 

 and Anjea's that the babies he makes are all left- 

 handed whereas those which owe their origin to Anjea 

 are right-handed. On the Proserpine River a super- 

 natural being named Kunya forms the babies out of 

 pandanus roots and inserts them into the women while 

 they bathe. 1 He obtains the vital spirit from the after- 

 birth of the child's reputed human father if the child be 

 a boy, or if a girl from that of the reputed father's 

 sister, the hiding-place of which he knows. 2 At Cape 

 Grafton a species of pigeon brings the baby ready 

 made to the mother in the course of a dream. 3 We 

 have in a previous chapter considered the beliefs of 

 the Tully River blacks which are equally wide of 

 the truth. 4 In north-west-central Queensland so 



1 Roth, N. Queens! . Ethnog. Bull. v. 23, ss. 82, 83. 



2 Id. 18, s. 6 9 a. 3 Id. 22, s. 81. 



4 Supra, vol. i. pp. 52, 119. They are aware, however, that the 

 ordinary means of generation apply to the lower animals ; that it is 



