Oct. 12, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



393 



confirmation to my views, only the facts are scattered, and 

 require to be rightly allocated. 



To begin with his conclusions: "The class systems of 

 Australia have been developed from the original division of 

 a community into two exogamous groups." Over very ex- 

 tensive districts " the meaning of the two primary class names 

 is almost everywhere Eagle-hawk and Crow." Native names 

 for Eagle-hawk and Crow are Bunjil and Waa. " Bunjil is 

 one of the fixed stars, probably Fomalhaut." "A native 

 legend recounts how Bunjil left the earth with his sons and 

 ascended to the sky in a whirlwind. Woiworung astronomy 

 points out where they now are. Bunjil is Fomalhaut, and as 

 my informant said, ' He is looking at what men are doing.' 

 The ' sons ' of Bunjil are all stars of the southern hemi- 

 sphere, and all come into one quarter of the circle, with Fomal- 

 haut — the brightest star in Pisa's Australis — at one extreme. 

 I should have expected them to extend over half a circle, 

 with Fomalhaut midway; and when I observe that the native 

 informant gave only six stars as sons of Bunjil or Fomalhaut, 

 and placed five of them by the fingers of his left hand, saying 

 that this was usual with his tribe, I suspect that some stars 

 of the other quarter circle are counted as sons of Bunjil*; 

 and that the lost clan stars of Waa occupied the remaining 

 semi-circle (with the star Alphard, cor Hydra, as the parent, 

 equivalent to Waa). 



Further confirmation of the astronomical origin is afforded 

 by the diagram, which Mr. Howitt's native informant made by 

 arranging sticks upon the ground. There were thirteen 

 sticks, all radiating from a centre, their directions determined 

 by the sun, and number one placed in a direction due east. 

 The unequal angles of the others can be best understood by 

 supposing that they indicate the meridians of stars. "The 

 direction in which the sticks pointed indicated how the indi- 

 vidual was to be laid in his grave." Nine of the sticks re- 

 presented the principal totems of Krokitch, which was only 

 one of the primary classes out of two ; but in the diagram 

 the entire nine occupied scarcely more than half a circle. 



Next "we find among the Iroquois six annual religious 

 festivals, which were common to all the gentes united in a 

 tribe, and which were observed at stated seasons of the year. 

 Each gens furnished a number of ' Keepers of the Faith,' 

 both male and female, who together were charged with the 

 celebration of these festivals."! Here at least we have among 

 barbarians public duties, probably of a combined military 

 and religious character, and a conscription of persons to per- 

 form them. This reminds us of the Hebrew arrangement, 

 in which the Levites performed duties partly military and 

 partly religious in connection with the tabernacle. J Before 

 these duties were devolved upon the tribe of Levi alone, they 

 were performed by contingents from all the twelve tribes, § 

 and when the change was made, the rebellion of Korah, 

 Dathan, and Abiram showed that much dissatisfaction was 

 felt at the apparent usurpation. Henceforth the tribe of 

 Levi served as substitutes for the eldest sons of all the 

 tribes, || for each of whom they received a redemption price 

 of five shekels. The High Priest stood as the representative 

 of all the twelve tribes ; he wore their names upon his 

 shoulders.H and upon his breast the twelve precious stones 

 which were representative of the twelve months of the year 

 and the zodiacal signs.** At a later period, when the work 

 of the Levites had become more specialised as religious work, 

 a national militia was organised by David, in twelve regi- 

 ments, one from each tribe, to serve mo nthly.tf The descrip- 



* " Canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?" — Job xxxviii. 32. 



t Morgan, 82. 



\ See Stanley's " Jewish Church." 



§ Exod. xxiv. 5, 9. Kalisch on Levit. i., 396. Judges, xvii. 5 ; 

 Judges i. Compare for useful suggestion A. D. Tyssen's pamph- 

 let, " Origin of the Week Explained." 



|| Kalisch on Leviticus i. 358, 376 ; note 398. 



If Kalisch i. 356. 



** These twelve stones represented, according to Clement Alexan- 

 drinus, the twelve signs of the zodiac (Strom, i. 5. Drummond, 228). 



ff 1 Chron. ■xxvii. 1. 



tion of the Israelitish camp in the wilderness shows us the 

 twelve tribes in four groups — north, south, east, and west of 

 the tabernacle. In marching, the groups are headed severally 

 by the tribes of Reuben, Judah, Dan, and Ephraim, each 

 carrying a standard. What these ensigns were we are in- 

 formed by Aben Ezra, and in the Targuin of Jonathan Ben 

 Uzziel, Reuben carried a bull, Judah a lion, Dan an eagle 

 or a basilisk, and Ephraim a man. Taking the basilisk as 

 equivalent to a scorpion, these four signs also head the four 

 quarters of the zodiac ; and it is worthy of note that while 

 the bull is the first of the zodiacal signs in the ancient writers, 

 and the lion is always fourth from the bull, Reuben was the 

 first-born son of Jacob, aud Judah his fourth son. 



Frazer tells us (p. 81) that when a North American tribe 

 is on the march, the members of each totem clan camp toge- 

 ther, and the clans are arranged in a fixed order in camp, 

 the whole tribe being arranged in a great circle, or in several 

 concentric circles. When the tribe lives in settled villages 

 or towns, each clan has its separate ward. In Mexico there 

 were four divisions of the army, which were drawn from the 

 four phratries of the people ; * and Morgan tells us that 

 Herrera, after mentioning a chapel of lime and stone for the 

 idol, says that the idol gave orders for the division into four 

 wards, leaving itself in the middle. 



If we regard the division into four as being based on the 

 seasons of the year and the quarters of the heavens, we see 

 how very natural it is, and how likely to have been suggested 

 independently to the men of different continents. Nearly all 

 the towns or tribes of the Aztecs were divided into four 

 clans, or quarters, whose chiefs constituted the great council. 

 They were of separate lineage, and had distinguishing 

 standards and costumes, and went out to war as separate 

 divisions. The Munniepores, and the following tribes in- 

 habiting the hills round Munniepore — the Koupouees, the 

 Mous, the Murams, and the Murring — are each and all divided 

 into four familes, which may not intermarry with those of 

 their own name. 



If the division into four is based on the four quarters of 

 the year, and of the heavens, there is one arrangement which 

 is simpler still, and that is a division into two, representing 

 summer and winter, or light and darkness, the upper and the 

 under sky. Plutarch tells us that the Persian twelve were 

 classed as six of the Light and six of the Darkness. The 

 Australians have a grand classification of all things in nature 

 into two phratries. The eagle and crow in their myths were 

 continually at war, like the Persian Ormuzd and Ahriman. 

 The same eagle and crow are constellations, and at the 

 same time progenitors of the human race, and as creators 

 they divided the Murray Blacks into two classes.t Again, 

 with the Australians, the sun, the summer, the wind, and the 

 kangaroo, etc., belong to one grand division; the moon, the 

 winter, the rain, the alligator, etc., belong to the other. But 

 a time came when the two great phratries had to be sub- 

 divided, and now nearly all the tribes consist of four classes 

 — for instance, Ippai, Kubbi, Murri, and Kumbo — two in 

 each phratry, and each marrying into the opposite phratry. 

 The Seneca-Iroquois are divided into two phratries of four 

 gentes each. They recognise a Great Spirit and an Evil 

 Spirit, besides a multitude of inferior spiritual beings. Both 

 in America and Australia we may notice that when the divi- 

 sions are more than four, they are apt to be eight or twelve 

 or sixteen, which are multiples of four. Among the Altarians 

 in Siberia we find twenty-four sections, each having its own 

 patron divinity and religious ceremonies. In most instances 

 these larger numbers may have been arrived at by sub- 

 division of the clans ; but in the case of the number twelve, 

 the division of the year into months would lend its aid as a 

 determining cause. 



{To be continued.) 



The Rain in London. — According to Dr.W. J. Russell, 

 the rain which falls in the City contains twice as much 

 impurity as that falling simultaneously in the suburbs. 



* Morgan, "Ancient Society," 98, 198, 203. 



t Frazer, 83 ; A. Lang, *' Myth and Ritual," ii. 4 ; Wake, 



