458 Professor James George Frazer [Feb. 5, 



incest. Further, the people think that alarming natural phenomena, 

 such as a violent earthquake or the eruption of a volcano, are caused 

 by crimes of this sort. Persons charged with these offences are 

 brought to Ternate ; it is said that formerly they were often drowned 

 or thrown into the volcano. 



In some parts of Africa also it is believed that breaches of sexual 

 morality disturb the course of nature, particularly by ])hghting the 

 fruits of the earth. Thus, tlie negroes of Loango imagine that the 

 commerce of a man with an immature girl is punished by God with 

 drought and consequent famine, until the transgressors expiate their 

 transgression by dancing naked before the king and an assembly of 

 the people, who throw hot gravel and bits of glass at the pair as they 

 run the gauntlet. 



But in the opinion of many savages the effect of sexual immorality 

 is not merely to disturb the balance of nature by blasting the crops, 

 causing the earth to quake, and so forth ; the delinquents themselves, 

 their offspring, or their innocent spouses are supposed to suffer in 

 their own person for the sin that has been committed. Thus, the 

 Baganda of Central Africa believe that if a wife who is with child by 

 her husband commits adultery, she will either die in childbed or go 

 mad and attempt to kill and devour her offspring. Further, they 

 think that if, after the child is born and before it is named, either 

 husband or wife proves unfaithful to the other, their child will die, 

 unless the medicine-man saves its life by a magical ceremony. Again, 

 it appears to be a common superstition that the infidelity of a wife 

 prevents her husband from killing game, and even exposes him to the 

 risk of being himself killed by wild beasts. Malagasy women suppose 

 that if they are unfaithful to their husbands while the men are away 

 at the wars, the absent spouse will be wounded or killed in action ; 

 and this superstition is said to act as a restraint on the wives at home. 

 The Zulus imagine that an unfaithful wife who touches her husband's 

 furniture without first eating certain herbs causes him to be seized 

 with a fit of coughing, of which he soon dies. These savages are 

 also of opinion that the mere presence of an adulterer or adulteress 

 in the sick chamber of the person whom they have wronged will 

 cause the sufferer to die. This superstition also is said to act as a 

 deterrent on Zulu women. Lastly, among the Sulka of New Britain 

 unmarried persons who have been guilty of un chastity are believed 

 to contract thereby a fatal pollution of which they will die, if they 

 do not confess their fault and undergo a public ceremony of purifica- 

 tion. Such persons are avoided : no one will take anything at their 

 hands : parents point them out to their children and warn them not 

 to go near them. The infection which they are supposed to spread 

 is apparently conceived as physical rather than moral : for special 

 care is taken to keep the paraphernalia of the dance out of their way, 

 the mere presence of persons so polluted being thought to tarnish the 

 paint on the instruments. But by a public ceremony of purification 



