54 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
Malay Magic. I will call attention to one—the use of neoliths (believed to be 
thunder bolts) as charms against lightning. 
The following is an extract from my diary relating to a celt purchased 
at J arum in R ha man :—■* A man brought a very fine stone adze blade for sale. 
He said that he had dug it up at Betong, it having risen to near the surface 
after heavy rain. He advised me not to keep it in the house during a thunder 
storm, as it would leap about in a very terrifying manner after every peal. 
On such occasions he himself always buried it in the ground under his house, 
where it acted as a protection for the house and all it contained/ 
Of course the theory of some charms and drugs is obscure, partly because 
the resemblances between the object and the image are, to our understanding, 
frequently far-fetched and fanciful, and partly because they have been invented 
quite fortuitously in many cases. For example, small silver pieces of the 
Straits coinage are now used as charms to make the rice grow in parts of Rhaman, 
the origin of the usage being a chance remark made by one of the followers 
of the * Skeat 1 expedition, to the effect that these coins were strong medicine. 
To give another instance, I procured at Jarum a waterworn pebble of rather 
peculiar shape, something like that of a kidney, which was also a rice charm. 
The following story was told regarding it 
Some years ago a man came into the village and said that he lost a black 
stone, which was a valuable rice charm, on his way from Patani. One of the 
villagers went out and searched all along the track for some miles until he 
found a black stone, which, from its peculiar shape and polished surface, he 
concluded to be the lost charm. Every year since he found it he had sprinkled 
his rice-fields with water in which it had been soaked, and was quite satisfied 
that this had increased their fertility. 
We must remember, too, that, keen observers of nature as the Malays 
are, likenesses and differences which are only noticeable to town-bred 
Europeans after a very careful examination often strike them at once, while, 
on the other hand, concentrated as their minds often are on matters of 
trifling import, resemblances of a very superficial nature may mean more to 
them than those of fundamental importance. It is not obvious, for instance, 
to a European naturalist, especially to one who has spent his life in a museum 
or a laboratory, why the Malays should classify the gibbons as squirrels rather 
than monkeys ; but, on the other hand, I have seen a Malay pointing out to 
his friends the anatomical differences between a tree-shrew and a squirrel 
which so nearly resembled it that 1 have known the mimicry to deceive a 
very competent British zoologist, until he had made a careful examination 
of both animals. 
