described for us by Mr. W. E. Roth. Thus, for example,
the aborigines on the Pennefather River think that every
person's spirit undergoes a series of reincarnations, and that
in the interval between two reincarnations the spirit resides
in one or other of the haunts of Anjea, a mythical being who
causes conception in women by putting mud babies into
their bodies. Such spots, haunted by the fabulous being
Anjea and by the souls of the dead awaiting rebirth, may
be a tree, a rock, or a pool of water; they clearly corre-
spond to the local totem centres (oknanikilla among the
Arunta, mungai among the Warramunga) of the Central
Australian tribes which I described in former lectures. The
natives of the Pcnnefather River observe a ceremony at
the birth of a child in order to ascertain the exact spot
where its spirit tarried in the interval since its last incarna-
tion; and when they have discovered it they speak of the child
as obtained from a tree, a rock, or a pool of water, according
to the place from which its spirit is supposed to have passed
into its mother. ¹ Readers of the classics can hardly fail to
be reminded of the Homeric phrase to be "born of an
oak or a rock," ² which seems to point to a similar belief in
the possibility of human souls awaiting reincarnation in the
boughs of an oak-tree or in the cleft of a rock. In the
opinion of the Pennefather natives all disembodied human
spirits or choi, as they call them, are mischief-makers and evil-
doers, for they make people sick or crazy; but the medicine-
men can sometimes control them for good or evil. They
wander about in the bush, but there are certain hollow trees
or clumps of trees with wide-spreading branches, which they
most love to haunt, and they can be heard in the rustling
of the leaves or the crackling of the boughs at night.
Anjea himself, who puts babies into women, is never seen,
but you may hear him laughing in the depths of the forest,
among the rocks, in the lagoons, and along the mangrove
swamps; and when you hear his laugh you may be sure
that he has got a baby. ³ If a native happens to hurt
himself near a tree, he imagines that the spirit of some dead

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