lant from which they themselves derive their
family name. Thus, on the evidence of institutions, it is plain that
the Australians are (or before the influence of the Europeans became
prevalent were) in a state of mind which draws no hard and fast line
between man and the things in the world. If, therefore, we find that
in Australian myth, men, gods, beasts, and things all shift shapes
incessantly, and figure in a coroboree dance of confusion, there will
be nothing to astonish us in the discovery. The myths of men in the
Australian intellectual condition, of men who hold long conversations
with the little "native bear," and ask him for oracles, will naturally
and inevitably be grotesque and confused.(1)

(1) Brough Smyth, i. 447, on MS. authority of W. Thomas.

It is "a far cry" from Australia to the West Coast of Africa, and it
is scarcely to be supposed that the Australians have borrowed ideas and
institutions from Ashantee, or that the people of Ashantee have derived
their conceptions of the universe from the Murri of Australia. We find,
however, on the West African Coast, just as we do in Australia, that
there exist large local divisions of the natives. These divisions are
spoken of by Mr. Bowditch (who visited the country on a mission in 1817)
as nations, and they are much more populous and powerful (as the people
are more civilised) than the local tribes of Australia. Yet, just as
among the local tribes of Australia, the nations of the West African
Coast are divided into stocks of kindred, each STOCK having its
representatives in each NATION. Thus an Ashantee or a Fantee may belong
to the same stock of kindred as a member of the Assin or Akini nation.
When an Ashantee of the Annona stock of kindred meets a Warsaw man of
the same stock they salute and acknowledge each other as brothers.
In the same way a Ballarat man of the Kangaroo stock in Australia
recognises a relative in a Mount Gambier man who is also a Kangaroo.
Now, with one exception, all the names of the twelve stocks of West
African kindreds, or at least all of them which Mr. Bowditch could get
the native interpreters to translate, are derived from animals, plants
and other natural objects, just as in Australia.(1) Thus Quonna is a
buffalo, Abrootoo is a cornstalk, Abbradi a plantain. Other names are,
in English, the parrot, the wild cat, red earth, panther and dog. Thus
all the natives of this part of Africa are parrots, dogs, buffaloes,
panthers, a