It appears, at least to the mind of the maker of an hypothesis, that the names of Melanesian kemas, as well as the new names of American ‘_gentes_’ (totem kins with male descent), indicate the probability that, from the first--as among our villagers--group names were given (in the majority of cases) from without, as in many American and some Melanesian cases they certainly are. We see that it is so: no group would call itself ‘Cat’s Cradle Players,’ or ‘Eaters of Hide-scrapings,’ or ‘Bone Pickers,’ as in Florida; among the Sioux; and in Western England. We cannot possibly expect to find any groups in the process of becoming totemic and of having plant and animal names given to them from without. But we certainly do observe that names, or nicknames, relatively recent, are given to savage groups, on their way out of Totemism--the totem name often still lingering on in America, like the _butos_ in Melanesia--and that these names, or nicknames, are given from without. Nearer to demonstration that the totem names were given in the same way (as ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ were given), we cannot expect to come. It may be said that my conjecture is only a form of that suggested (if I understand him) by Mr. Herbert Spencer. An individual had an animal name or nickname. He died: his ghost was revered by his old name, say Bear. He was forgotten, and his descendants, who kept up his worship, came to think that they were descended from a real bear, and were akin to bears. I need not once more reiterate the objections to this theory, but, like my own suggestion, it involves forgetfulness of a fact,--here the fact that ‘Bear’ was a human ancestor. Against the chances of this forgetfulness was the circumstance that individuals were constantly being named Bear, Wolf, Eagle, and so on, in daily experience, usually with a qualifying epithet, ‘_Sitting_ Bull,’ ‘_Howling_ Wolf,’ and so forth. These facts might have prevented Mr. Spencer’s savages from forgetting that the ancestral Bear was a Bear of human kind, like themselves and their contemporaries.