(M73) Among the Kai of German New Guinea, “impossible as it may be thought, it is yet a fact that women here and there deny in all seriousness the connexion between sexual intercourse and pregnancy. Of course most people are clear as to the process. The ignorance of some individuals is perhaps based on the consideration that not uncommonly married women remain childless for years or for life. Finally, the animistic faith contributes its share to support the ignorance.”(327) In some islands of Southern Melanesia the natives appear similarly to believe that sexual intercourse is not necessary to impregnation, and that a woman can conceive through the simple passage into her womb of a spirit-animal or a spirit-fruit without the help of a man. In the island of Mota, one of the Banks’ group, “the course of events is usually as follows: a woman sitting down in her garden or in the bush or on the shore finds an animal or fruit in her loincloth. She takes it up and carries it to the village, where she asks the meaning of the appearance. The people say that she will give birth to a child who will have the characters of this animal or even, it appeared, would be himself or herself the animal. The woman then takes the creature back to the place where she had found it and places it in its proper home; if it is a land animal on the land; if a water animal in the pool or stream from which it had probably come. She builds up a wall round it and goes to feed and visit it every day. After a time the animal will disappear, and it is believed that that is because the animal has at the time of its disappearance entered into the woman. It seemed quite clear that there was no belief in physical impregnation on the part of the animal, nor of the entry of a material object in the form of the animal into her womb, but so far as I could gather, an animal found in this way was regarded as more or less supernatural, a spirit animal and not one material, from the beginning. It has happened in the memory of an old man now living in Mota that a woman who has found an animal in her loincloth has carried it carefully in her closed hands to the village, but that when she opened her hands to show it to the people, the animal has gone, and in this case it was believed that the entry had taken place while the woman was on her way from the bush to the village.... When the child is born it is regarded as being in some sense the animal or fruit which had been found and tended by the mother. The child may not eat the animal during the whole of its life, and if it does so, will suffer serious illness, if not death. If it is a fruit which has been found, the child may not eat this fruit or touch the tree on which it grows, the latter restriction remaining in those cases in which the fruit is inedible.... I inquired into the idea at the bottom of the prohibition of the animal as food, and it appeared to be that the person would be eating himself. It seemed that