790 REPORT— 1894. 



'Voyage of Discovery to the Great Loochoo Island,' published in the year 1818. 

 Mr. Chamberlain has now ascertained that Loochooan stands to Japanese in. about 

 the same relation that Spanish does to French. The importance of this discovery will 

 be best appreciated when it is remembered that the Japanese language had hitherto 

 .stood in a position of complete isolation, without kindred of any sort. With this 

 new key it will be possible to solve many difficult questions of Japanese philology, 

 and in the paper the author discusses the formation of the negative conjugation 

 of Japanese verbs from this new point of view. Mr. Chamberlain also establishes 

 the fact that Japanese, as we now have it, is the language of the invaders of the 

 Archipelago, not that of the previous inhabitants, by whom the invaders might be 

 .supposed to have been absorbed. 



8. Report of the Committee on the North-western Tribes of Canada. 



See Reports, p. 453. 



9. On the Significance of Objects with Holes. 

 By Miss A. W. Buckland. 



This paper treats of what appears to be a world-wide superstition, belongiog to 

 all races and to all time, in which holes are credited with healing and protective 

 powers. 



The superstition exists among us at present in the shape of lucky money and 

 lucky stones, but can be traced back to Neolithic times, in the great holed stones 

 and dolmens which are found in Great Britain and Ireland as well as in many 

 countries of Europe, in North Africa, India, Syria, Circassia, and also in America. 

 The chief of British holed stones, the Men-an-tol, is still known locally as the C'rick- 

 .stone, and through it people creep for the cure of rheumatism. 



In Siberia wooden figures bored with holes are carried about as a cure for 

 various diseases, according to the part in which the hole is bored ; and figures of 

 great age have been found in Peru and among the Eskimo, which seem from the 

 holes in them to have been intended for the same purpose. Engraved .'hells also 

 similarly bored have been found in ancient Chaldea and m the American mounds. 



The same superstition appears to be traceable in the trephined skulls of Neolithic 

 times found in many countries, and from which amulets have been cut, probably 

 for the cure of epilepsy, the disease for which the operation was undoubtedly 

 undertaken, since it was thus employed up to quite recent times; and the bones of 

 the human skull were always recommended, either grated as a potion, or worn as 

 an amulet, for the cure of epileptic disease. 



Miss Buckland believes the healing property thus attached to holes to be of 

 necromantic origin. She regards the hole as the symbol of the underworld, the abode 

 of the Creator in some cosmogonies, and always of the spirits of dead ancestors. 

 Hence they are summoned bj- the medicine-men to assist them in their healing 

 ceremonies and magic incantations ; and thus the hole, through which they are 

 drawn by sorcery, became to the savage the source of healing, and in this form, 

 modified by time, it has descended to us. 



The underworld also was the reputed source of wealth ; hence the s^-mbolical hole 

 in money caused it to be regarded as lucky money, and this probably e.xplains the 

 use of ring money among the ancients. These symbolical holes are also found in 

 ceremonial weapons in West Africa and in the South Sea Islands, as they were also 

 probably in Ancient Egypt and other countries; the idea suggested being that the 

 Ijearer of the "weapon assumed the power of sending offenders to Hades, lloles exist 

 also in magic wands and in staves, especially in the South Sea Islands, where the 

 holes certainly represent deceased ancestors. 



The magic wands and the South Sea staves or idols resemble so strongly the 

 holed implements of reindeer horn found in caves of Palajolithic times, that 

 Miss Buckland believes these staves also to have been used by the medicine-men of 

 that remote period as symbols of the world of spirits over which they assumed 

 control, and that thus we can trace the superstitions connected with holes to the 

 eaxUest of the human race. 



