Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/86

Rh called kim, which is very similar to the one which makes holes in taro. The resemblance between dental caries and the cavities bored by the beetle in taro is a sufficient proof that similar effects have been produced by similar causes. But some of my informants had actually seen the small black scarab fall out of a man's mouth while a woman was performing the curative formula.

There are, as we have seen, forms of hereditary magic which can be carried on only by male members of a sub-clan, or, exceptionally, by the son of such a member. (And in the latter case he has to relinquish it at his father's death.) Now, if the males of a certain generation were to die out, a woman could learn such magic, though she would not be allowed to practise it, and when she bore a male heir to her sub-clan, would teach him the formula for his future use. Thus woman can tide over the gap of one generation, carrying in her memory a system of garden magic, or weather and wind charms, or spells for fishing, hunting, canoe building, and oversea trade. She can even preserve a system of war magic, but she must never learn the formula of masculine sorcery, which is strictly taboo to the female sex. Nor is there any necessity for her to do so, since this magic is never strictly hereditary within a sub-clan. Thus we see that the strong tribal position of women is also buttressed by their right to exercise magic — that toughest and least destructible substance of belief. And now, in order to summarize briefly the results of this chapter and the previous one, let us imagine that we Rh