eather, and their clothing consists chiefly of the
inner bark of trees.[340] They use stone or slate implements. The
authority for this information does not directly state their social
formation, but in a footnote he compares them to the Negritos of the
Philippine Islands, "who are divided into very small societies very
little connected with each other." This is confirmed by Mr. Hugh
Clifford, who relates a story told to him in the camp of the Semangs,
which tells how these people were driven to their present
resting-place, "not for love of these poor hunting grounds," but
because they were thrust there by the Malays who stole their women.
One further point is interesting; they have a legend of a people in
their old home, composed of women only. "These women know not men, but
but when the moon is at the full, they dance naked in the grassy
places near the salt-licks; the evening wind is their only spouse, and
through him they conceive and bear children."[341] All this has been
confirmed and more than confirmed by the important researches of
Messrs. Skeat and Blagden in their recently published work on these
people. There is no necessity to do more than refer to the principal
features brought out by these authorities. In the valuable notes on
environment, we have the actual facts of the migratory movement drawn
clearly for us;[342] their nomadic habits, rude nature-derived
clothing, forest habitations and natural sources of food are
described;[343] the evolution of their habitations from the natural
shelters, rock shelters, caves, tree buttresses, branches, etc., is to
be traced;[344] they belong to the old Stone Age, if not to a previous
Wood and Bone Age;[345] they have no organised body of chiefs, and
there is no formal recognition of kinship; marital relationship is
preceded by great ante-nuptial freedom;[346] the name of every child
is taken "from some tree which stands near the prospective birthplace
of the child; as soon as the child is born, this name is shouted aloud
by the _sage femme_, who then hands over the child to another woman,
and buries the after-birth underneath the birth-tree or name-tree of
the child; as soon as this has been done, the father cuts a series of
notches in the tree, starting from the ground and terminating at the
height of the breast;"[347] the child must not in later life injure
any tree which belongs to the species of his birth-tree, and must not
eat of its fruit. There is a theory to