CHAP. V.] DUTY AND PLEASUKE. 99 



thrown at him by all such persons as conceive themselves to have 

 been aggrieved, or by permitting spears to be thrust through certain 

 parts of his body; such as through the thigh, or the calf of the leg, or 

 under the arm. The part which is to be pierced by a spear is fixed 

 for all common crimes, and a native who has incurred this penalty 

 sometimes quietly holds out his leg for the injured party to thrust his 

 spear through ! So strictly is the amount of punishment limited, that 

 if, in inflicting such spear wounds, a man, either through carelessness 

 or from any other cause, exceeded the recognised limits if, for instance, 

 he wounded the femoral artery he would in his turn become liable to 

 punishment.&quot; Origin of Civilisation, p. 318, 



The next is a yet stronger example of savage refinement, 

 furnished us by Sir John Lubbock : 



&quot;Among the Greenlanders, should a seal escape with a hunter s 

 javelin in it, and be killed by another man afterwards, it belongs to 

 the former. But if the seal is struck with the harpoon and bladder, 

 and the string breaks, the hunter loses his right. If a man finds a 

 seal dead, with a harpoon in it, he keeps the seal but returns the 

 harpoon Any man who finds a piece of drift-wood can appro 

 priate it by placing a stone on it, as a sign that some one has taken 

 possession of it. No other Greenlander will then touch it.&quot; Ibid. 

 p. 305. 



But perhaps the recently extinct Tasmanians were at a 

 lower level than the Australians. If so, Mr. Tylor shows us by 

 a legend which he relates, that they had a strong apprecia 

 tion of even male conjugal fidelity. The inhabitants of 

 Tierra del Fuego are, if possible, more wretched savages 

 than the Australians, yet it is very interesting to note that 

 even with respect to these no less hostile a witness than 

 Mr. Darwin himself informs us that when a certain Mr. 

 Bynoe shot some very young ducklings as specimens, a 

 Fuegian declared, in the most solemn manner, &quot; Oh, Mr. 

 Bynoe ! much rain, snow, blow much ! &quot; And as to this 

 declaration, Mr. Darwin tells us that the anticipated bad 

 weather &quot; was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting 

 human food,&quot; i.e., for a transgression of the aborted moral 

 code recognised by the Fuegian in question. 



That the language of savage tribes is capable of ex 

 pressing moral conceptions will probably be contested by no 



H 2 



