DIFFERENCES IN PREVALENT SOUNDS. 457 



where it is called faire la couvade." A full account of this 

 most extraordinary habit will be found in Tylor's Early 

 History of Mankind, on the authority of which I make the 

 above statements.* 



Again, the love of life the dread of death are among 

 the strongest of our feelings. "Everything that a man hath, 

 he will give in exchange for his life." But this is by no 

 means universally the case. According to Azara, the Indians 

 of Paraguay have a great indifference to death ; and we have 

 already seen that this is the case with the Feegeeans. 

 Among the Chinese it is said that a man condemned to death, 

 if permitted to do so, may always secure a substitute on pay- 

 ment of a moderate sum of money. 



Again, the sounds by which language is constituted differ 

 extremely in different parts of the world. The clicks of the 

 Hottentots are a striking illustration of this. The Indians of 

 Port au Francais in Columbia, according to M. de Lamanon,f 

 make no use of the consonants b> f, x, j, d, p, or v. The 

 Australians did not use the sound conveyed by our letter s. J 

 The Feegeeans do not use the letter c, the Soino-Somo dialect 

 has no k, that of Rakiraki and other parts no . The 

 Society Islanders exclude both s and c. || In representing 

 the New Zealand language the missionaries found them- 

 selves able to discard no less than thirteen letters, namely, 

 b, c, d,f, g,j, /, q, s, v, x, y, and z. If 



Even the symbols by which the feelings are expressed are 

 very different in different races. Kissing appears to us the 

 natural expression of affection ; yet it was entirely unknown 

 to the Tahitians,'the New Zealanders,** the Papouans,ff and 

 the aborigines of Australia, nor was it in use among the 



* I.e. p. 288. f Voyage de la Perouse, vol. ii.,.p. 211. 



J Freycinet, vol. ii., p. 757; D'Urville, vol. i., p. 188, 199, 481. 



Figi and the Figians, vol. i., p. v., 257. || Polynesian Researches, vol. i., p. 77. 



IT Brown. New Zealand and its Aborigines, p. 100. 



** D'Urville, vol. ii., p. 561. ff Freycinet, vol. ii., p. 56. 



