ld-mice were sacred in Old
Egypt, and were not to be eaten on this account. So, too, in some parts
of Greece, the mouse was the sacred animal of Apollo, and mice were fed
in his temples. The chosen people were forbidden to eat 'the weasel,
and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind.' These came under the
designation of unclean animals, which were to be avoided.

"But people have abstained from eating kinds of flesh which could not
be called unclean. For example, the people of Thebes, as Herodotus
tells us, abstained from sheep. Then, the ancients used to abstain from
certain vegetables. In his 'Roman Questions' Plutarch asks: 'Why do the
Latins abstain strictly from the flesh of the woodpecker?' In order to
answer Plutarch's question correctly it is necessary to have some idea
of the peculiar custom and belief called 'totemism.' There is a stage
of society in which people claim descent from and kinship with beasts,
birds, vegetables, and other objects. This object, which is a 'totem,'
or family mark, they religiously abstain from eating. The members of
the tribe are divided into clans or stocks, each of which takes the
name of some animal, plant, or object, as the bear, the buffalo, the
woodpecker, the asparagus, and so forth. No member of the bear family
would dare to eat bear-meat, but he has no objection to eating buffalo
steak. Even the marriage law is based on this belief, and no man whose
family name is Wolf may marry a woman whose family name is also Wolf.

"In a general way it may be said that almost all our food prohibitions
spring from the extraordinary custom generally called totemism. Mr.
Swan, who was missionary for many years in the Congo Free State, thus
describes the custom: 'If I were to ask the Yeke people why they do not
eat zebra flesh, they would reply, 'Chijila,' i.e., 'It is a thing to
which we have an antipathy;' or better, 'It is one of the things which
our fathers taught us not to eat.' So it seems the word 'Bashilang'
means 'the people who have an antipathy to the leopard;' the
'Bashilamba,' 'those who have an antipathy to the dog,' and the
'Bashilanzefu,' 'those who have an antipathy to the elephant.' In other
words, the members of these stocks refuse to eat their totems, the
zebra, the leopard, or the elephant, from which they take their names.

"The survival of antipathy to certain foods was found among people as
highly civilized as the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Quite a