Occasional Notes. 359 
any other instances which may be brought forward, that 
these intended means — of course I am here referring 
only to artificial feather-culture as practised among 
primitive folk and not to an instance of a somewhat 
analogous practice, to which I shall presently refer, 
among civilized people — are all based on what has been 
described as the doctrine of signatures. The idea that 
the bright colour, or any other quality, of one animal 
or inanimate object, may be imparted to another by 
inoculating the second with whatever may be deemed 
the most essential part of the first is so very simple and 
natural that it must occur, and prevail largely, even in 
very primitive minds, and must indeed form one of the few 
earliest and simple factors by the combination of which 
the primitive man forms his small stock of secondary 
ideas. Granting, as surely may easily be granted, that 
the primitive man, in whatever quarter of the globe he 
may be situated, desires feathers of a colour, or a bril- 
liancy of colour, not easily obtainable in feathers but 
evident to him in some other object, his very natural idea 
is to attain his end by imparting some portion of the 
virtue, and with the virtue the desired and, as he sup- 
poses, correlative quality of the latter object to some 
bird which shall produce for him feathers with the de- 
sired quality. So, desiring feathers of unnatural bril- 
liancy, he removes the natural plumage and rubs into 
the skin, into the wounds produced by this tearing out, 
some such matter as the blood, or some other secretion, 
of a brilliant-coloured frog or as the bright-coloured body 
paint which he himself uses so frequently for other 
purposes. In short, the practice may, and is very likely 
to, originate any number of times and in any number 
