However it be, the Omaha prays to Wa-kon-da, not for ‘any particular thing,’ but for whatever, in the gift of Wa-kon-da, is good, and mainly for a manitu (‘personal totem’). The Omaha also believe in telepathy. ‘Thought and will can be projected to help a friend.’ A magical society exists, to concentrate and direct this expenditure of energy, and the process is strengthened by such things as the neophyte beholds in vision, after prayer to Wa-kon-da. He sent an answer to prayer, a feather of a bird, a tuft of a beast’s hair, a crystal, a black stone, representing the species, or element of nature, which was to be the neophyte’s ‘personal totem,’ or _manitu_. If it were thunder, the man could control the elements; if it were an eagle, he had an eagle eye for the future; if it were a bear (or a badger), he was not so gifted. Now, according to Miss Fletcher, the Bear Magical Society is composed of men, who, after prayer, have seen the bear in dream or vision; those who saw representatives ‘of thunder or water beings’ form the Society which deals with the weather. ‘The membership came from every kinship group’ (totem kin) ‘in the tribe.’ Thus the Magical Societies are composed of men of any totem, and, the less purely totemic the tribe, the stronger is the Magical Society. The totem kins now, among the Omaha, have descent in the male line. All this is ‘late,’ and ‘late’ is the totem priesthood held by ‘hereditary chiefs of the _gens_.’ Miss Fletcher regards the totem of the ‘_gens_,’ with the beliefs crystallised around it, as an ingenious ‘expedient,’ with a social ‘purpose!’ the totem of each kindred having been inherited from the vision and _manitu_ of some ancestral chief. We need not again point out that, even now, among the Omaha, advanced as they are, _manitus_ are not hereditable, and that Miss Fletcher’s system cannot account for Totemism in tribes which reckon descent on the spindle side. Miss Fletcher justly remarks that the real totem, ‘the gentile totem,’ ‘gave no immediate hold upon the supernatural, as did the individual totem’ (_manitu_) ‘to its possessor. It served solely as a mark of kinship, and its connection with the supernatural was manifest only in its punishment of the violation of tabu.’ In brief, the real totem, and the individual _manitu_, with its magical societies, are two things totally apart, and apart we must keep them, in our studies of early society. Not to do so is to make the topic incomprehensible. TOTEM SURVIVALS