(M99) Now it is to be observed that stories of this sort are told by savage tribes to explain why they abstain from eating certain creatures. The reason they assign for the abstinence is that they themselves are descended from a creature of that sort, who was changed for a time into human shape and married a human husband or wife. Thus in the rivers of Sarawak there is a certain fish called a _puttin_, which some of the Dyaks will on no account eat, saying that if they did so they would be eating their relations. Tradition runs that a solitary old man went out fishing and caught a _puttin_, which he dragged out of the water and laid down in his boat. On turning round he perceived that it had changed into a very pretty girl. He thought she would make a charming wife for his son, so he took her home and brought her up till she was of an age to marry. She consented to be his son’s wife, but cautioned her husband to use her well. Some time after marriage, however, he was angry and struck her. She screamed and rushed away into the water, leaving behind her a beautiful daughter who became the mother of the race. Other Dyak tribes tell similar stories of their ancestors.(366) Thus the Sea Dyaks relate how the white-headed hawk married a Sea Dyak woman, and how he gave all his daughters in marriage to the various omen-birds. Hence if a Sea Dyak kills an omen-bird by mistake, he wraps it in a cloth and buries it carefully in the earth along with rice, flesh, and money, entreating the bird not to be vexed, and to forgive him, because it was all an accident.(367) Again, a Kalamantan chief and all his people refrain from killing and eating deer of a certain species (_cervulus muntjac_), because one of their ancestors became a deer of that kind, and as they cannot distinguish his incarnation from common deer they spare them all.(368) In these latter cases the legends explaining the kinship of the men with the animals are not given in full; we can only conjecture, therefore, that they conform to the type here discussed.