sea and visit the village in which the man whose ghost it was had dwelt. It was known by his name and was on friendly terms with the natives, allowing children to ride on its back.[15]

In Syria there are stories of girls being carried off by bears and giving birth to human-animal offspring. The Creeks believe the offspring to be bears which later turn into men. Japan is famous for its white bear-god and the Tartars believe that earth spirits take the form of bears.

The Gilyaks believe that if one of their race is killed by a bear, his soul transmigrates into the animal's body. Californian Indians have been heard to plead hard for the life of a she-bear. They said its wrinkled face was like the withered features of a dead grandmother whose soul had entered into the animal.

One of the Omaha clans believe they are descended from bison and the males wear their hair in imitation of the animal which is their totem.

The Ewe negroes of Togoland ascribe to the souls of buffaloes and leopards the power of killing the hunter who slew them, or of misleading him in the chase so that he confuses men with animals and gets into difficulties from being accused of murdering the former. The souls of these dangerous animals are thought to haunt and plague the hunter, perhaps by making him crazy, so that when he finds his way back into the town he loses all his property and is sold into slavery. A quaint ceremony is performed to prevent such power emanating from the dead prey.

The Baganda natives are in deadly terror of the ghosts of the buffaloes they have killed, believing that they may work harm to them.

The crocodile especially has played a large part in these beliefs about human and ghostly animals.

Natives in Simbang, in German New Guinea, are convinced that their relatives turn into crocodiles, and they recognise a certain crocodile known by the name of "Old Butong" as head of the family. They say he was born of a woman. Mary Kingsley tells a similar story in her "Travels in West Africa," describing human beings, who, disguised as alligators, swim in the creeks, attack the canoes and carry off the crew. The natives believe in the spirit of the man actually possessing the animal's body.

In New Guinea and the East Indies as well as in West Africa crocodiles are thought to be the abodes of the souls of ancestors, and the victim of this dangerous reptile is said to have incurred the vengeance of some human being who has taken the form of the animal, while those who kill crocodiles become themselves transformed after death. Spenser's "cruell craftie crocodile" was held to be sacred in Egypt, and the god Sebek was said to take its shape whenever he so desired.

The Malagasy view is that the crocodile is the ally of a magician during his lifetime, and that he can send him forth as a familiar to wreak harm upon his enemies.

The alligator is closely allied to the crocodile. Among the legends of the Arawak Indians of British Guiana is one about a half human beast of this species which received its extraordinary markings in the following manner: Arawadi, the sun-god, coming to earth saw an alligator disporting himself on the banks of a stream which he had preserved specially for fish. To get rid of the enemy he seized and smote him with a hard club upon the head and tail, but the alligator, crying out to him to stay his hand, promised in return for clemency a beauteous water-sprite to be his bride. Arawadi agreed to the proposal.