are coincidences, they are fortuitous, or they result from evolution, which leads all the human group through the same stages and by the same steps’ (‘Race and Language,’ p. 185). “Many far more inexplicable coincidencies than any of those here referred to occur in different regions, where not even contact can be suspected. Such is the strange custom of _Couvade_, which is found to prevail among peoples so widely separated as the Basques and Guiana Indians, who could never have either directly or indirectly in any way influenced each other” (=34=). It is surely unnecessary to comment at length upon this quibbling, which is a fair sample of the kind of self-destructive criticism one meets in ethnological discussions nowadays. Talking of the “limitation of the range of thought” when out of the unlimited possibilities for its unhampered activities the human mind hit upon four episodes of such a fantastic nature, Keane taxes the credulity of his readers altogether too much when he solemnly tries to persuade them that such ideas are the most natural things in the world for mankind to imagine! Surely it would have been better tactics frankly to admit the identity of origin, and then, following the example of Hough (=35=), minimize its importance by indicating the variety of possible ways by which Asiatic influence may have influenced America sporadically in comparatively recent times. But instead of this, Keane insisted upon pushing his refusal to admit the most obvious inferences to the extreme limit and invoked the practice of _Couvade_ as the _coup de grâce_ to the views he was criticizing. But it was singularly unfortunate for his argument that he selected _Couvade_. His dogmatic assertion that the two peoples he selected are “so widely separated” that they could “never have either directly or indirectly in any way influenced one another” is entirely controverted by the fact that, although _Couvade_ is, or was, a widespread custom, all the places where it occurred are either within the main route of the great “heliolithic culture-wave” or so near as easily to be within its sphere of influence. Thus it is recorded among the Basques,[19] in Africa, India, the Nicobar Islands, Borneo, China, Peru, Mexico, Central California, Brazil and Guiana. Instead of being a “knockout blow” to the view I am maintaining, the geographical distribution of this singularly ludicrous practice is a very welcome addition to the list of peculiar baggage which the “heliolithic” traveller carried with him in his wanderings, and a striking confirmation of the fact that in the spread from its centre of origin this custom must have travelled along the same route as the other practices we are examining.