ANTHROPOLOGY. 
117 
and can roughly draw the chart of their own district, which they should 
be encouraged to do. Native knowledge of natural history differs from 
much of their rude science in its quality, often being of great positive 
value. The savage or barbarian hunter knows the animals of his own 
region and their habits with remarkable accuracy, and inherited expe¬ 
rience has taught him that certain plants have industrial and medicinal 
uses. Thus, in South America the Europeans learnt the use of India- 
rubber or caoutchouc, which the native tribes were accustomed to make 
into vessels and playing-balls, and of the Peruvian bark or cinchona, 
which was already given to patients in fever. 
Here a few words may be said of magic, which, though so utterly futile 
in practice, is a sort of early and unsuccessful attempt at science. It is 
easy, on looking into the proceedings of the magician, to see that many of 
them are merely attempts to work by false analogy or deceptive associa¬ 
tion of ideas. The attempt to hurt or kill a person by cutting or piercing 
a rude picture or image representing him, which is met with in all the 
four quarters of the globe, is a perfect example of the way in which 
sorcerers mistake mere association of ideas for real cause and effect. 
Examined from this point of view, it will be found that a large pro¬ 
portion of the magic rites of the world will explain their own meaning. 
It is true that this is not the only principle at work in the magician’s 
mind; for instance, he seems to reason in a loose way that any extra¬ 
ordinary thing will produce any extraordinary effect, so that the peculiar 
stones and bits of wood which we should call curiosities become to the 
African sorcerer powerful fetishes. It will often be noticed that arts 
belonging to the systematic magic of the civilised world, which has its 
source in Babylon and Egypt, have found their way into distant lands 
more readily indeed than useful knowledge, so that they may even be met 
with among barbaric tribes. Thus it has lately been pointed out that the 
system of lucky and unlucky days, which led the natives in Madagascar 
to kill many infants as of inauspicious birth, is adopted from Arabic 
magic, and it is to be expected that many other magical arts, if their 
formulas are accurately described, may in like manner be traced to their 
origin. 
Society .—One of the most interesting features of savage and barbaric 
life is the existence of an unwritten code of moral conduct, by which 
families and tribes are practically held together. There may be no laws 
