456 CURIOUS CUSTOMS. 



male line ; but there are very many tribes in which it is traced 

 from the mother, not the father. The husband or father 

 seems to us to be the natural head of the family ; in Tahiti 

 the reverse is the case, and the son enters at once into the 

 property and titles of his father, who then holds them only 

 as a guardian or trustee ; so that among this extraordinary 

 people, not the father, but the son, is in reality -the head of 

 the family. Among the New Zealanders Mr. Brown assures 

 us that the youngest son succeeded to the property of the 

 father.* There are many races in which those holding cer- 

 tain relationships are forbidden to talk to one another, an 

 extraordinary superstition which, as we have seen (p. 364), 

 reaches its climax among the Feegeeans. 



It seems natural to us that after childbirth, the woman 

 should keep her bed ; and that as far as possible the husband 

 should relieve her for a time from the labors and cares of 

 life. In this, at least, one might have thought that all 

 nations would be alike. Yet it is not so. Among the 

 Caribs the father, on the birth of a child, took to his 

 hammock, and placed himself in the hands of the doctor, 

 the mother meanwhile going about her work as usual. A 

 similar custom has been observed on the mainland of South 

 America ; among the Arawaks of Surinam ; in the Chinese 

 province of "West Yunnan; it is mentioned by Strabo as 

 occurring in his time among the Iberians, and is found even 

 in the present day among the Basques, among whom we are 

 told that in some of the valleys, the " women rise immediately 

 after childbirth, and attend to the duties of the household, 

 while the husband goes to bed, taking the baby with him, 

 and thus receives the neighbours' compliments." The same 

 habit has been noticed also in the South of France ; accord- 

 ing to Diodorus Siculus it prevailed at his time in Corsica ; 

 and finally it " is said still to exist in some cantons of Beam, 

 * New Zealand and its Aborigines, p. 26, 



