continent, also in Peru (according to Garcilasso de la Vega); in Guiana
(the negroes have brought it from the African Gold Coast, where it is in
full force, as it also is among the Bechuanas); in India among Hos,
Garos, Kassos, and Oraons; in the South Sea Islands, where it has left
strong traces in Mangaia; in Siberia, and especially in the great island
continent of Australia. The Semitic evidences for totemism
(animal-worship, exogamy, descent claimed through females) are given by
Professor Robertson Smith, in the 'Journal of Philology,' ix. 17, 'Animal
Worship and Animal Tribes among the Arabs, and in the Old Testament.'
Many other examples of totemism might be adduced (especially from Egypt),
but we must restrict ourselves to the following questions:--

(1.) What light is thrown on the original form of the family by
totemism? (2.) Where we find survivals of totemism among civilised
races, may we conclude that these races (through scarcity of women) had
once been organised on other than the patriarchal model?

As to the first question, we must remember that the origin and
determining causes of totemism are still unknown. Mr. M'Lennan's theory
of the origin of totemism has never been published. It may be said
without indiscretion that Mr. M'Lennan thought totemism arose at a period
when ideas of kinship scarcely existed at all. 'Men only thought of
marking one off from another,' as Garcilasso de la Vega says: the totem
was but a badge worn by all the persons who found themselves existing in
close relations; perhaps in the same cave or set of caves. People united
by contiguity, and by the blind sentiment of kinship not yet brought into
explicit consciousness, might mark themselves by a badge, and might
thence derive a name, and, later, might invent a myth of their descent
from the object which the badge represented. I do not know whether it
has been observed that the totems are, as a rule, objects which may be
easily drawn or tattooed, and still more easily indicated in
gesture-language. Some interesting facts will be found in the 'First
Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology,' p. 458 (Washington, 1881).
Here we read how the 'Crow' tribe is indicated in sign-language by 'the
hands held out on each side, striking the air in the manner of flying.'
The Bunaks (another bird tribe) are indicated by an imitation of the cry
of the bird. In mentioning the Snakes, the hand imitates the crawling
motion of the serpe