[301] A boy “with epileptic tendency being preferred,” as im Thurn noted was the case in British Guiana (im Thurn, p. 334).
[302] Waterton, p. 449.
[303] Cf. im Thurn, p. 349.
[304] Cf. Westermarck, p. 152.
[305] Spruce, ii. 430-31.
[306] I have never seen the medicine-man’s palm-leaf boxes mentioned by Spruce, ii. 431.
[307] Among the Mungaberra the medicine-men “can and often do assume the form of eagle-hawks,” and thus attack other tribes (Spencer and Gillen, p. 533). It may be that the medicine-men of Indian tribes nearer the mountains, where these birds have their habitat, assume the form of a condor, as the medicine-man of the forest districts does that of the jaguar, for the condor is “sacred throughout practically the whole of the Andean region.” See Joyce, p. 175.
[308] The jaguar and the anaconda are both magical beasts. See Chap. XIX.
[309] Note: Among the Arunta the medicine-man has “a particular kind of lizard distributed through his body, which endows him with great suctional powers” (Spencer and Gillen, p. 531).
[310] See im Thurn, pp. 329-31.