524 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



described by Spencer and Gillen, the chief performer is elaborately 

 decorated with patterns in eagle-hawk down stuck to his body with blood 

 drawn from some member of the tribe. It was estimated that one man 

 alone, on one of these occasions, allowed five half-pints to be taken 

 from him during a single day; at the same time the blood is not re- 

 garded as sufficient pigment and the down is also colored red 

 and yellow with ochre. Eed ochre, Spencer and Gillen remark, is 

 frequently a substitute for blood or is used with it. Blood is a medi- 

 cine, and when any one is ill he is first rubbed over with red ochre, it 

 being obvious to the primitive mind that the ochre will share the 

 remedial properties of blood; in the same way ceremonial objects may 

 sometimes be rubbed over with ochre instead of blood. They asso- 

 ciate this red ochre especially with women's blood; and it is said that 

 once some women after long walking were so exhausted that hemor- 

 rhage came on and this gave rise to deposits of red ochre. Other red 

 ochre pits, also, they attribute to blood which flowed from women. It 

 appears also that the blood with which sacred implements used in the 

 ritual ceremonies of these Central Australians were smeared must be 

 drawn from women. 



Far from Australia, among the hill tribes of the Central Indian 

 hills, we find the same blood ritual and the same tendency to substitute 

 pigments for blood. Among some of the Bengal tribes, says Crooke, 

 blood is drawn from the husband's little finger, mixed with betel and 

 eaten by the bride. A further stage is seen among the allied Kurmis 

 who mix the blood with lac dye. Lastly come the rites, common to all 

 these tribes, in which the bridegroom, often in secrecy, covered by a 

 sheet, rubs vermilion on the parting of the girl's hair, while the 

 women relations smear their toes with lac dye. It is a sacramental 

 rite, and after the husband's death the widow solemnly washes off the 

 red from her hair, or flings the little box in which she keeps the coloring 

 matter into running water. 



Some of the foregoing facts, both in Australia and India, suggest 

 the transition to another factor in the emotional potency possessed by 

 red. Ked is not only the color of fire and of war and of ritual pigment; 

 it is the color of love. This is certainly an ancient and powerful factor 

 in the emotional attitude towards red. Secondary sexual characters, 

 even among birds, are often red; many fishes, also, at the epoch of the 

 oviposit show a red tint on the orifice of the sexual apparatus; patches 

 of red, sometimes very brilliant, but only appearing when the animal 

 is mature, are perhaps the commonest adornments of monkeys. In 

 man the color of the hair and beard, the most conspicuous of the 

 secondary sexual characters, is most usually brown, or some other 

 variety of red. The lips are crimson, the mucous membrane generally 

 a dark red; the scarlet of the blush, among all fair races, whatever 



