[444] A. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i, 117 ff.
[445] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 389, 401. Some Australians believed in an original gradual transformation of animals and plants into human beings.
[446] On the conception of animals as ancestors see below, § 449 f.
[447] A demon may be defined as a supernatural being with whom, for various reasons, men have not formed friendly relations. Cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, new ed., p. 119 ff., on the Arabian jinn; De Groot, Religion of the Chinese, p. 13 ff., for the Chinese belief in demonic animals. On the origin, names, and functions of demons and on exorcismal ceremonies connected with them see below, § 690 ff., and above, § 138 ff.
[448] So the Eskimo, the Ainu, the Redmen, and modern Arabs in Africa; many other instances are cited by Frazer in his Golden Bough, 2d ed., ii, 386 ff.
[449] Examples are found in many folk-stories of savages everywhere.
[450] For other sacred animals see N. W. Thomas, article "Animals" in Hastings, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics.
[451] Turner, Samoa, p. 238.
[452] Frazer, Golden Bough, 2d ed., ii, 430 ff.; Thomas, article "Animals" cited above; Shortland, Traditions of New Zealand, iv; Marsden, Sumatra, p. 292; Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, i, 34; v, 652; Waitz, Anthropologie, iii, 190; Callaway, Amazulus, p. 196; A. B. Ellis, The Tshi, p. 150; Mouhot, Indo-China, i, 252; J. Wasiljev, Heidnische Gebräuche der Wotyaks, pp. 26, 78, etc.; G. de la Vega, Comentarios Reales, bk. i, chap. ix, etc. (Peru); Miss Kingsley, Travels, p. 492.
[453] Turner, op. cit., p. 242; Castrén, Finnische Mythologie, pp. 106, 160, 189, etc.; Parkman, Jesuits in North America (1906), pp. 61 f., 66; Brinton, Myths of the New World, pp. 3, 105, 127, 161, 175, 272; cf. Acosta, Historia de las Indias, bk. v, chap. iv.