42 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



into the possession of its privileges ; marriages, 

 funerals, reciprocal obedience between persons and 

 classes, or to the chief; public assemblies, and the 

 existence of powers equal or superior to living men. 



Among the Tasmanians, the placenta was reli- 

 giously venerated, and they carefully buried it, lest it 

 should be injured or devoured by animals. If the 

 mother died in childbirth her offspring was buried 

 alive with her. When a man attained puberty, he 

 was bound to submit to certain ceremonies, some of 

 them painful, and dictated by phallic superstitions. 

 Funeral rites were simple : the corpse was either 

 burnt, with howls and superstitious functions, or it 

 was placed in the hollow trunk of a tree in a sitting 

 position, with the chin supported by the knees, as 

 was the custom with Peruvian mummies ; and the 

 belief in another world prompted them to place the 

 weapons and utensils used during life beside the 

 corpse. Sometimes a wooden lance, with fragments 

 of human bones affixed to it, "was placed below the 

 tumulus, as a defence for the dead during his long 

 sleep. It appears from these customs, and from others 

 mentioned by Clarke, that they had a vague idea of 

 another life, holding that the shades went up to 

 inhabit the stars, or flew to a distant island where 

 they were born again as white men. These beliefs 

 were necessarily connected with the rites which they 

 fulfilled when living, and served as a kind of obscure 

 sanction for them. 



