pendent being dwelling in the plant.
To it all the powers of the latter were ascribed, and it became a friend
or an enemy, an object of worship or of dread.[471]

+266+. This difference of attitude on man's part toward different plants
probably showed itself at an early period. Those that were found to be
noxious he would avoid; the useful he would enter into relations with,
though on this point for very early times there is in the nature of the
case little information.[472] Unfriendly or demonic spirits of plants
are recognized by savage man in certain forests whose awe-inspiring
gloom, disease-breeding vapors, and wild beasts repel and frighten him.
Demons identified with plants or dwelling in them are of the same nature
as animal demons, and have been dealt with in the same way as
these.[473]

+267+. The progress of society brought men into association with useful
plants, such as medicinal and edible herbs, and fruit-bearing and
shade-giving trees; these, conceived of as inhabited by anthropomorphic
spirits, fulfilled all the functions that attach to friendly animals.
They became guardians and allies, totems and ancestors.[474] Several of
the Central Australian totems are plants, and form part of the mythical
ancestral population constructed by the imagination or ethnographic
science of the people.[475] In Samoa a plant is often the incarnation of
a spirit friendly to a particular family[476]--a conception that is not
improbably a development from an earlier view that a certain plant had a
special relation to a certain clan.[477] In general, a plant important
in a given region (as, for example, the tobacco plant in North America)
is likely to be invested with a sacred character.

+268+. Trees, by reason of their greater dignity (size, beauty,
protective character), have generally been singled out as special cultic
centers.[478] A great tree sometimes served as a boundary mark or
signpost; under trees chiefs of clans sat to decide disputes. Thus
invested with importance as a sort of political center as well as the
abode of a spirit, a tree naturally became a shrine and an asylum.[479]
In India and Greece, and among the ancient Celts and Germans, the gods
were worshiped in groves, by the Canaanites and Hebrews "under every
green tree." To cut down a sacred tree was a sacrilege, and the spirit
of the tree was believed to avenge the crime.[480]

+269+. As might be expected, there is hardly a species of tree that has