SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— H. 365 



taking his degree, went to Malekula for ethnographical investigations. He did a 

 large amount of first-class work during the year or more that he was in the field, and 

 died of blackwater fever as he was waiting for the steamer to take him to Sydney, 

 where he had been appointed to the lectureship in Anthropology in the university. 

 His death is a very grievous loss to the science of Anthropology. From time to time 

 he sent me copies of some of his notes, and from these I have compiled the information 

 that I now present to the section. 



There is a very large number of different diagrams or figures, and the method of 

 drawing them is handed down from generation to generation. They are made only 

 by men, but they are not secret, as women may see them. A rectangular area is 

 made level and smooth on the sand or ashes are spread over the surface of th& 

 smoothed earth. In drawing them a framework of simple lines, squares or rectangles 

 is first constructed, and then, starting from a certain point, curves, circles or ellipses 

 are described about the framework in a continuous line without lifting the finger from 

 the sand until the original starting-point is reached. So far as possible no line is- 

 traced over a second time. The natives have technical terms for certain loops. 

 Some of the figures represent various tubers, shells or turtle, a rat eating a breadfruit, 

 the sun, moon and various objects and persons connected with their mythology or 

 secret ceremonial. Many of the figures have stories about them. A number of the 

 figures have extraordinary functions : one is used in swearing an oath. Another, 

 called ' the path,' is drawn* by a spirit in front of a rock, the path lies across the middle 

 of the figure. As each ghost of a dead man comes along the road to the other world 

 the guardian spirit rubs out half the figure on arriving at the rock, the ghost loses his 

 way and wanders about searching for a road to get past the spirit of the rock. If 

 he knows how to complete the rubbed-out half of the figure he does so, and passes 

 along the track or path in the middle. If, however, he does not know the figure, 

 the spirit eats him and so he never reaches the abode of the dead. Several of the 

 figures are definitely connected with a mythical being variously termed Ambat, Kabat, 

 Hambut. Sometimes he is spoken of as the being who made man ; others speak of 

 five Ambat who are affirmed to have been white men with narrow noses, but their 

 descendants became black. The Ambat are associated with very secret fertility 

 ceremonies, the charnel place of the clan, stone tables and upright stones, sacred 

 pottery and other things, including a ritual use of branches of the piper methysticum, 

 the kava tree. Until Mr. Deacon's full notes are available little more can be said 

 about these elaborate drawings, but it is evident that they belong to that rich and 

 distinctive cult which has spread over so wide an area in Western Oceania. 



Wednesday, September 7. 



Dr. R. A. Fisher. — Measurements and Degrees of Resemblance in Triplet 

 Children from the King's Bounty Records. 



Unlike most foreign countries, there is in Great Britain no official registration of 

 multiple births ; the existence of a Royal Bounty to parents of surviving triplet 

 children does, however, afford a means, of which advantage has hitherto not been 

 taken, of studying triplet cases. Since the conditions of the bounty are very wide, 

 the records of the King's Bounty afford effectively a special registry of triplets born 

 alive. The paper deals with an extract covering three years of these records, with 

 the information supplied by the parents and with measurements of the surviving 

 triplets at 6J years of age. 



Two controversial problems in connection with twins concern (i) the supposed 

 influence of the father, and (ii) the frequency of occurrence of identical twins due to 

 the fission of an original single zygote. Records of births of near relatives of the 

 fathers and mothers of triplets afford decisive evidence of the influence of the father 

 in the case of triplets. The measurements of the children afford measures of the degree 

 of resemblance of triplets of like and unlike sex. Additional points of interest concern 

 the precision of measurements required in such an enquiry and the precision actually 

 attainable ; the partial or complete recovery in physical dimensions of children bora 

 much undeveloped and with a low chance of survival ; and the need of more 

 comprehensive national data upon normal children as a basis for comparison. 



