ed and cast
into the river or lake. Next day the guilty brother or one of his family
is dragged ashore, formally tried, sentenced to death, and executed. The
claims of justice being thus satisfied, the dead animal is lamented
and buried like a kinsman; a mound is raised over his grave and a stone
marks the place of his head. (Father Abinal, "Croyances fabuleuses des
Malgaches", "Les Missions Catholiques", XII. (1880), page 527; A. van
Gennep, "Tabou et Totemisme a Madagascar", pages 281 sq.)

Amongst the Tshi-speaking tribes of the Gold Coast in West Africa the
Horse-mackerel family traces its descent from a real horse-mackerel whom
an ancestor of theirs once took to wife. She lived with him happily
in human shape on shore till one day a second wife, whom the man had
married, cruelly taunted her with being nothing but a fish. That hurt
her so much that bidding her husband farewell she returned to her old
home in the sea, with her youngest child in her arms, and never came
back again. But ever since the Horse-mackerel people have refrained from
eating horse-mackerels, because the lost wife and mother was a fish of
that sort. (A.B. Ellis, "The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast
of West Africa" (London, 1887), pages 208-11. A similar tale is told by
another fish family who abstain from eating the fish (appei) from which
they take their name (A.B. Ellis op. cit. pages 211 sq.).) Some of the
Land Dyaks of Borneo tell a similar tale to explain a similar custom.
"There is a fish which is taken in their rivers called a puttin, which
they would on no account touch, under the idea that if they did they
would be eating their relations. The tradition respecting it is, that a
solitary old man went out fishing and caught a puttin, which he dragged
out of the water and laid down in his boat. On turning round, he found
it had changed into a very pretty little girl. Conceiving the idea she
would make, what he had long wished for, a charming wife for his son,
he took her home and educated her until she was fit to be married. She
consented to be the son's wife cautioning her husband to use her well.
Some time after their marriage, however, being out of temper, he struck
her, when she screamed, and rushed away into the water; but not without
leaving behind her a beautiful daughter, who became afterwards the
mother of the race." (The Lord Bishop of Labuan, "On the Wild Tribes
of the North-West Coast of Borneo", "Transactions of the Ethn