THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 553 



wlio died in Apulia; the flesh was interred at Mont Cassin and the 

 bones were transported to his own country by his servants.^ 



The ossuaries of Palermo are celebrated. The dead, after complete 

 dessication, were piously transported, and upon fete days their parents 

 and friends did not forget to visit them. 



Merimee, in his notes of the voyage in the west of France, mentions 

 the shrine of St. Herbot which belongs to the time of Louis XIY. The 

 bones of the dead were, after a certain number of years' inhumation, 

 gathered and deposited in the shrine. Merimee adds that the con- 

 structions destined to the same usage are numerous in different parts of 

 Brittany, and that no one of them antedates the Gothic period. At the 

 present time in certain parts of Switzerland, after the disappearance 

 of the flesh, they take the skull out of the earth or grave and place it 

 in the j)arish church, inscribed with the name of the deceased and the 

 date of his death. There are evidences of ancient customs where all 

 the bones have been disposed in the same fashion. 



If we traverse the ocean we will find similar conditions. Pigoriui 

 notes the same thing among the Tahitians, the New Zealanders, the 

 aborigines of Fly Eiver, the Papuans, the inhabitants of New Guinea, 

 and other peoples. The profound respect of the dead is one of the 

 characteristic traits of the Maories, says Quatrefages.^ 



The tribes remaining independent observe scrupulously the ancient 

 rites. The dead body is tabooed; they lament during several .days 

 around the dead body before they confide it to the earth. At the end 

 of a certain time they remove it from its temporary tomb, and the 

 bones, carefully gathered, are carried to a cavern known only to the 

 initiated and is extremely tabooed. 



In America the examples are not less numerous or less interesting.'^ 

 The same rite exists from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi and in 

 South America. The death of an Indian, recounted by Sir John Lub- 

 bock'' is followed by particular ceremonies. When the flesh was 

 detached from the bones they were suspended in the air on a bed of 

 reeds or interlaced branches, that they might be dried by the sun and 

 bleached by the rain. The most distinguished women of the tribe are 

 charged with the duty of drying the bones. During the pious cere- 

 mony the Indians, covered with long mantles, their faces blackened 

 with soot, march about, striking the earth with staff's to frighten off the 

 valichus (evil spirits) from the corpse. The bones are then loaded upon 

 the favorite horse of the deceased and carried to the sepulcher of his 

 ancestors. 



Ancient traditions of these customs have been transmitted from gen- 

 eration to generation. Every twelve years the Hurons celebrated the 



' BonstetteB, Essai sur les dolmens. 



2 Sur V6tat actuel des Maoris rest^s ind^pendants. Revue d'Ethn., t. IV, 1885. 

 ^ Schoolcraft, History of the Indian Tribes of the United States. 

 ^L'Homme avant I'histoire, trad, franc, page 440. 



