190 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 
this purpose were worked out among the various tribes— 
all of them believed to be infallible. Some of these have 
already been mentioned in the section on native law. 
Another type of prediction is palm reading, known to 
the Tirurai as fengintuanan, and practised also by the 
Bagobo with attention to lines of life, wealth, and the 
like, rather similarly to the indications recognized in our 
own system. That palmistry has been reported only 
from Mindanao suggests that it is a relatively recent 
importation, possibly an accompaniment of Islamism. 
Perhaps the most interesting of all the many forms of 
divination prevailing in the Philippines are two types 
familiar to us from the religion of the ancient Greeks 
and Romans: augury or the foretelling of the future by 
the flight and actions of birds, and haruspicy or predic- 
tion by the examination of the internal organs of 
slaughtered animals. In the southern Philippines a 
species of pigeon known as the limokun is the favorite 
omen bird. In northern Luzon, smaller species known 
as tuttut, pitpit, ichu, and so on, are favored. The liver 
and bile sack of the pig are the internal organs most 
frequently inspected. The color, shape, or size of these 
are portentous in much the same way as the appearance 
of the omen bird on the right or left side of the observer, 
its behavior, or its call. 
nigrtunmtely. the details of these methods of divina- 
tion have been much less fully recorded in the Philip- 
pines than in Borneo; or else Filipino practices were in 
themselves much less elaborate. Nevertheless, all the 
evidence available suggests that the existence of these 
types of foretelling in the East Indies is no mere interest- 
ing coincidence, but that the practices are directly and 
historically connected with those of the ancient Mediter- 
ranean peoples. Hepatoscopy, the particular method of. 
divination by means of the liver of sacrificial animals, 
