SURVIVALS EXIST IN ALL KINDS OF SOCIETIES 157 



instances of survival. We will take as examples 

 those rudimentary types most nearly approaching to 

 the primitive type, 1 i.e. the Veddahs of Ceylon, the 

 Fuegoes of Cape Horn, and the Australian tribes. 



(a) The Veddahs, who have lived in the jungles 

 of Ceylon for centuries, either as separate families, 

 or in groups of two or three families, appear to 

 have formerly possessed a much more complicated 

 social organization. According to Max Miiller, 

 they were not formerly so low in the scale of 

 humanity ; he says that their language, if not 

 their blood, betrays their " distant connection with 

 Plato, Newton, and Goethe." 



In their language, folk-lore, and clothing, these 

 retain characteristic vestiges of a former condition. 

 Take for instance the carefully observed practice of 

 piercing the ears of children at the age of three or 

 four years, although eventually only a small number 

 of them could wear ornaments in them, others 

 having to be content with small pieces of twig, 

 coiled leaves, or bits of straw. 



" This custom," says Deschamps, " is extremely 

 old, and we may suppose as there is no other 

 signification in it than the prospect of ultimately 

 wearing jewels that it dates back from a time 

 when the people were not in so low and destitute 



1 "Aggregates formed by a simple repetition of hordes or clans 

 without any such interrelations between them as to form inter- 

 mediate groups between the whole collection and the individual 

 clans." Durckheim, Ics Regies de la mttlwde sociologique, Paris, 

 F. Alcan, 1895. 



