PHYSIOLOGICAL IGNORANCE 279 



human father exactly plays we are not told. His 

 power would be naught without the assistance of the 

 makers and distributors of babies whose complicated 

 proceedings have been described. On the whole 

 it looks as if these proceedings embody the earlier 

 guesses of the people at the mystery of birth, through 

 which they are dimly beginning to perceive the real 

 concatenation of cause and effect. 1 



Of no other people than the Australian blackfellows 

 have we such definite evidence that reproduction is 

 held to be independent of coition. The wonder is, 

 after making all allowance for the slow progress of 

 knowledge, that any tribe can yet be found ignorant 

 that the cause of birth is the union of the sexes. 

 Elsewhere however traces of this ignorance have 

 been found. It is questionable whether the Seri of 

 the Californian Gulf have any clear recognition of 

 paternity. 2 On the Slave Coast of West Africa, "the 

 Awunas, an eastern Ewhe tribe, say that the lower 

 jaw is the only part of the body which a child derives 

 from its mother, all the rest being derived from the 

 ancestral luwhoo (the Tshi Kra)* The father furnishes 

 nothing." 3 Their kinsmen the Hos of Togoland go 

 further. Though on a higher step of civilisation than 

 the Queenslanders they attribute as little of the child 

 as the latter even to the mother. It is their belief 



1 Parker, Euahlayi, 50, 51, 52, 61, 98. 



2 McGee, Rep. Bur. Ethnol. xvii. 272*. Dr. McGee bases his 

 opinion, to some extent at any rate, on philological grounds. 

 Whether he has any direct evidence I do not know. The extreme 

 rudeness of the Seri and the overwhelmingly preponderant position 

 of women in their social organisation lend strong colour to the 

 supposition of their ignorance (supra, p. 78). 



3 Ellis, Yoruba, 131 note. 



