PHYSIOLOGICAL IGNORANCE 273 



cited in the foregoing pages, tend to lessen the repro- 

 ductive power of the race. Other causes operating in 

 the same direction have also been suggested. What- 

 ever the cause, when the fertility of the race was small 

 that is to say, when the number of acts of sexual 

 union exceeded by an abnormal and overwhelming 

 proportion the result in child-birth the connection 

 between cause and effect would long remain unnoticed. 

 It might be thought that the relation between the 

 menses and the reproductive powers would be speedily 

 traced. So far, however, is this from being the case 

 that it has not even yet been discovered everywhere. 

 The natives on the Tully River in North Queensland 

 attribute menstruation to the breaking and discharge 

 of the liver. " What causes the breakage the women 

 do not know. They maintain however that it has 

 nothing to do with pregnancy, though they admit its 

 non-existence during that physiological period." They 

 declare that they can stop their menses by standing 

 under a particular kind of gum-tree and allowing some 

 of its sticky exudation to fall upon them. This 

 procedure is said to be resorted to in order to enable 

 them to walk about at all times without inconvenience. 

 On the Pennefather River the menses are said to be 

 produced by a kind of curlew operating on the woman/ 

 It is needless to remind the reader that the Sandwich 

 Islanders hold the menses, as stated a few pages back, 

 to be the result of sexual intercourse. The horror of 

 blood and especially of menstrual blood is universal in 

 the lower culture. It usually causes women to be 

 severed entirely from the men during the flow : a 

 practice which, to say the least of it, would not 



1 Roth, N. Queensl. Ethnog. Bull. v. 22, s. 80. 

 II S 



