62 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
regarding their pharmacopoeia* only noting that it appeared to be chiefly 
vegetable, and that they acknowledged that the Scmang tribes were far more 
skilful than they in this respect. To avoid misunderstandings* we interrogated 
each of them several times over, and put the same questions in slightly 
different ways on different occasions. 
When a birth is expected in a Malay or a Siamese house in Jalor, large 
quantities of firewood are collected on the platform and various substances 
regarded as obnoxious to the Earth Spirits are suspended beneath the floor, as it 
is these spirits which are believed to be dangerous to parturient females and 
young children. These substances include a variety of prickly leaves, on 
which the spirits might be supposed to scratch themselves, and the calcined 
shell of the king crab, Limulus rotundkauda , to the smell of which spirits 
object. (Curiously enough, the shell of the closely similar Limulus moluc- 
can us, which differs somewhat in habits, is not used). An arrangement is 
made at the same time with a midwife (or, in the case of a rich family, with 
several) to whom a retaining fee is paid in money or kind. 
During pregnancy a woman is not allowed to eat cold rice or to drink 
cocoanut water, as these substances are believed to render the head of the 
foetus hard and imcompressible, like a cocoanut, and so to make labour diffi¬ 
cult. Especially during the first six months* her husband must not kill or 
main any living thing, or even cut a creeper with his jungle-knife* lest a 
similar mutilation should be brought about in the unborn child.' 
At the same period many different drugs are administered as tonics ; for 
example (among both Malay and Siamese women), a kind of earth dug out of 
the banks of the river at certain places and roasted, and (among the Siamese 
only) the flesh of monkeys* especially of Presbytes (Semnopitbecus) obscurus . 
Professor B. Moore has been kind enough to examine specimens of this 
earth. The following are the results of his analysis :— 
‘ The earth was finely powdered and examined, chiefly for organic 
matter. The total organic matter, as shown by incineration of a weighed 
quantity of dried and powdered earth* is very small, amounting to less than 
five per cent. The inorganic matter consists almost entirely of silicates and 
aluminates* there being no effervescence when the powdered earth is treated 
with a dilute mineral acid. 
1 The search for nutrient organic matter was conducted by making 
extracts with cold and warm water, and with dilute acid and alkali, both in 
the cold and at boiling temperature. The extracts were afterwards tested for 
proteid and carbohydrate by the usual tests, but the results were in ail cases 
of a negative character. 
i, sinrea t part I, pp. 93-95. 
