8 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification. 



Guinea, New Zealand, Easter Island and North and 

 South America. 



Miss Buckland rightly draws the conclusion that "the 

 wide distribution of this peculiar custom is of considerable 

 significance, especially as it follows so nearly in the line" 

 which she had " indicated in two previous papers (8 and 

 9) as suggestive of a pre-historic intercourse between the 

 two hemispheres. . . . When we find in India, Japan, 

 Egypt, New Guinea, New Zealand, Alaska, Greenland 

 and America, the custom of tattooing carried out in pre- 

 cisely the same manner and for the same ends, and when 

 in addition to this we find a similarity in other ornaments, 

 in weapons, in games, in modes of burial, and many other 

 customs, we think it may fairly be assumed that they all 

 derived these customs from a common source, or that at 

 some unknown period, some intercourse existed " (p. 326). 

 In the first of her memoirs ^8) Miss Buckland calls 

 attention to "the curious connection between early wor- 

 ship of the serpent and a knowledge of metals," which is 

 of peculiar interest in this discussion, because the Proto- 

 Egyptians, who were serpent-worshippers {see Sethe, 74), 

 had a knowledge of metals at a period when, so far as our 

 present knowledge goes, no other people had yet acquired 

 it. Referring to the ancient Indian Indra, the Chaldean 

 Ea and the Mexican Quetzacoatl, among other gods, Miss 

 Buckland remarks : — " The deities, kings and heroes who 

 are symbolised by the serpent are commonly described as 

 the pioneers of civilisation and the instructors of mankind 

 in the arts of agriculture and mining." 



Further, in an interesting article on " Stimulants in 

 Use among Savages and among the Ancients" (9), she 

 tells us that "among aboriginal races in a line across the 

 Pacific, from Formosa on the West to Peru and Bolivia on 

 the East, a peculiar, and what would appear to civilised 



