nd so forth, just as the Australians are emus, iguanas, black
cockatoos, kangaroos, and the rest. It is remarkable that there is an
Incra stock, or clan of ants, in Ashantee, just as there was a race of
Myrmidons, believed to be descended from or otherwise connected with
ants, in ancient Greece. Though Bowditch's account of these West African
family divisions is brief, the arrangement tallies closely with that
of Australia. It is no great stretch of imagination to infer that the
African tribes do, or once did, believe themselves to be of the kindred
of the animals whose names they bear.(2) It is more or less confirmatory
of this hypothesis that no family is permitted to use as food the
animal from which it derives its name. We have seen that a similar rule
prevails, as far as hunger and scarcity of victuals permit it to be
obeyed, among the natives of Australia. The Intchwa stock in Ashantee
and Fantee is particularly unlucky, because its members may not eat
the dog, "much relished by native epicures, and therefore a serious
privation". Equally to be pitied were the ancient Egyptians, who, if
they belonged to the district of the sheep, might not eat mutton,
which their neighbours, the Lycopolitae, devoured at pleasure. These
restrictions appear to be connected with the almost universal dislike
of cannibals to eat persons of their own kindred except as a pious
duty. This law of the game in cannibalism has not yet been thoroughly
examined, though we often hear of wars waged expressly for the purpose
of securing food (human meat), while some South American tribes
actually bred from captive women by way of securing constant supplies of
permitted flesh.(3) When we find stocks, then, which derive their names
from animals and decline to eat these animals, we may at least SUSPECT
that they once claimed kinship with the name-giving beasts. The refusal
to eat them raises a presumption of such faith. Old Bosman(4) had
noticed the same practices. "One eats no mutton, another no goat's
flesh, another no beef, swine's flesh, wild fowl, cocks with white
feathers, and they say their ancestors did so from the beginning of the
world."

(1) The evidence of native interpreters may be viewed with suspicion.
It is improbable, however, that in 1817 the interpreters were
acquainted with the totemistic theory of mythologists, and deliberately
mistranslated the names of the stocks, so as to make them harmonise with
Indian, Australian, and Red