other people; they may not eat or even touch fresh food, particularly salmon. {p264} Wooden images and masks of birds and fish are placed round the hut, and others, representing fish, are set near the river for the purpose of inviting all birds and fish to come and see the twins, and be friendly to them. Moreover the father sings a special song praising the salmon, and asking them to come. And the fish do come in great numbers to see the twins. Therefore the birth of twins is believed to prognosticate a good year for salmon.​[898] But though a Nootka father of twins has thus to live in seclusion for two years, abstaining from fresh meat, and attending none of the ordinary feasts, he is, by a singular exception, invited to banquets which consist wholly of dried provisions, and at them he is treated with great respect and seated among the chiefs, even though he be himself a mere commoner. The birth of twins among the Nootkas is said to be very rare, but one occurred while Jewitt lived with the tribe. He reports that the father always appeared very thoughtful and gloomy, and never associated with other people. “His dress was very plain, and he wore around his head the red fillet of bark, the symbol of mourning and devotion. It was his daily practice to repair to the mountain, with a chief’s rattle in his hand, to sing and pray, as Maquina informed me, for the fish to come into their waters. When not thus employed, he kept continually at home, except when sent for to sing and perform his ceremonies over the sick, being considered as a sacred character, and one much in favour with their gods.”​[899] Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia twins were called “grizzly-bear children” or “hairy feet,” because they were thought to be under the protection of the grizzly bear, and to be endowed by him with special powers, such as that of making fair or foul weather. After their birth the parents moved away from other people, and lived in a lodge made of fir-boughs and bark till the children were about four years old. During all this time great care was taken of the twins. They might not come into contact with other people, and were washed with fir-twigs dipped in water. While they were being {p265} washed, the father described circles round them with fir-boughs, singing the song of the grizzly bear.​[900] With these American beliefs we may compare an African one. The negroes of Porto Novo, on the Bight of Benin, hold that twins have for their companions certain spirits or genii like those which animate a kind of small ape, which abounds in the forests of Guinea. When the twins grow up, they will not be allowed to eat the flesh of apes, and meantime the mother carries offerings of bananas and other dainties to the apes in the forest.​[901] Precisely similar beliefs and customs as to twins prevail in the Ho tribe of German Togoland. There the twins are called “children of apes”; neither they nor their parents may eat the flesh of the particular species