not intermarry, while men are obliged to defend, and in case of
murder to avenge, persons of the stock of the family or plant 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