Circumstances, which Sir James Frazer regards as very similar to those which he imagined as having prevailed at some former time amongst the Arunta, have been discovered by Dr. Rivers at Mota and Motlar in the Banks Islands. There many people are “by the custom of the island” not permitted to eat certain animals or fruits or even to touch certain trees; because they are believed to _be_ those animals or plants—their mothers having suffered some influence from such animals or plants at conception or at some subsequent period of pregnancy. “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 loin-cloth. 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 that animal.”[523] She takes it to its proper home, tries to keep it, and feeds it; but after a time it will disappear, and is then believed to have entered into her. There is no belief in physical impregnation by the animal, nor of its invading the woman as a physical object; such an animal seems to be considered as “more or less supernatural, a spirit-animal, from the beginning.” “The belief is not accompanied by any ignorance of the physical rôle of the human father.” Apparently the prohibition against eating animals or plants thus connected with oneself rests on the idea that it would amount to eating oneself—a sort of cannibalism. One partakes of its physical and mental characters. But the resemblance to, and the taboo on eating, a certain animal are individual matters; there is no belief in their being passed on to one’s descendants. In this alone the belief at Mota falls short of Totemism. “Yet it occurs in a people whose social system has no totemic features at the present time, whatever it may have had in the past.”[524] Possibly former Totem-clans have been merged in secret societies, but there is no clear evidence of it. In Melanesia, Totemism occurs in Fiji, Shortland Islands, Bismarck Archipelago (probably), Reef Islands, Santa Cruz, Vanikolo and in some regions of the Solomon Islands, but not in the Banks Islands nor in the Torres Islands to the south. * * * * *