consulted by magicians on important occasions (war, sickness, marriage).
It was supposed (somewhat as in the Banks Islands) that the tribal
sacred animal appeared to a mother just before the birth of her child.

+483+. Thus in Melanesia, along with a large mass of sacred objects
connected more or less intimately with social units (but not with clans
proper), there are usages and ideas that are commonly found associated
with clan totemism (belief in descent from a sacred thing and refusal to
eat it when it is edible), but also other ideas and usages (omens from
animals; superhuman determination, before a child's birth, of its
character; creation of a new sacred thing by an individual man) that
look away from clan organization to an individualistic form of
society.[834]

+484+. _Micronesia and Polynesia._ The character of the social
organization in Micronesia (the Caroline and Pelew groups, with which
may be included the little island of Tikopia, southeast of the Santa
Cruz group) is not very well known, but the published reports indicate a
considerable divergence from clan totemism. The westernmost island of
the Carolines, Uap (or Yap), according to a recent observer,[835]
retains many old beliefs, is without an exogamous system, and has a
large apparatus of spirits and gods. Elsewhere in the Carolines and in
Tikopia there are non-exogamous social groups, sacred animals greatly
revered, and in some places belief in descent from an animal-god. Sacred
animals and village gods (with exogamous families) are found in the
Pelew group.[836] The diversity in Micronesian customs may be due in
part to mixture of tribes resulting from migrations.

+485+. In Polynesia the family is generally the social unit, and there
is a fairly good political organization, with more or less developed
pantheons. Gods are held to be incarnate in animals and trees, but there
are also great gods divorced to some extent from phenomena. The theistic
development is noteworthy in Hawaii, New Zealand, Samoa, Tahiti, and
Tonga, and there are elaborate forms of worship with priests and
temples. The existing organization is not totemic, but here, as
elsewhere in similar cases, the question has been raised whether or not
the gods have arisen from sacred (or, more definitely, totemic) animals
and plants,[837] and whether, in general, the existing organization was
preceded by one approaching totemism.[838]

+486+. _Indonesia._ The Battas of the interior of