MUTILATIONS. 81 



meaningless tattooings of sailors, the branding of deserters 

 (until recently), and the cropping of the heads of felons. 



NOTE TO CHAPTER III. 



At the Royal Institution, in April, 1882, Dr. E. B. Tylor deliv 

 ered a lecture on &quot;The Study of Customs &quot; (afterwards published in 

 Macmittan s Magazine for May, 1882), which was primarily an attack 

 on this work. 



One of the objections he made concerns the interpretation of scars 

 and tatooings as having originated in offerings of blood to the dead ; 

 and as becoming, by consequence, marks of subordination to them, 

 and afterwards of other subordination. He says : 



&quot;Now the question here is not to determine whether all this 5s imaginable 

 or possible, but what the evidence is of its having actually happened. The 

 Levitical law is quoted, Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the 

 dead, nor print any marks upon you. This Mr. Spencer takes as good evidence 

 that the cutting of the flesh at the funeral develops into a mark of subjection.&quot; 



But Dr. Tylor ignores the fact that I have referred to the Huns, 

 the Turks, the Lacedaemonians, as following customs such as Leviti 

 cus interdicts (besides eight cases of like lacerations, leaving marks, 

 in 89). Nor does he hint that there are uncited cases of like mean 

 ing: instance the ancient Scythians, among whom, according to He 

 rodotus (iv. 71), each man in presence of a king s corpse, &quot;makes a 

 cut all round his arm, lacerates his forehead and his nose, and 

 thrusts an arrow through his left hand;&quot; or instance some modern 

 Australians, who, says Grey, on the authority of Bussel, &quot;placed the 

 corpse beside the grave and gashed their thighs, and at the flowing 

 of the blood they all said I have brought blood &quot; (p. 882). Not 

 only does Dr. Tylor lead readers to suppose that the evidence I have 

 taken from Leviticus is unsupported by like evidence elsewhere de 

 rived, but he passes over the fact that this form of bodily mutilation 

 is associated by me with other forms, similarly originating and having 

 similar sequences. He omits to say that I have named four peoples 

 among whom amputated fingers are offered in propitiation of the 

 dead ; two among whom they are given in propitiation of a god ; and 

 one the ferocious Fijians among whom living persons also are pro 

 pitiated by sacrificed ringers; and that I have joined this last with 

 the usage of the Canaanites, among whom amputated thumbs and 

 toes marked conquered men, and hence became signs of subordina 

 tion. He did not tell his hearers that, as mutilations entailed by 

 trophy-taking, I have named the losses of hands, feet, parts of the 

 ears and nose, and parts of the genital organs ; and have shown that 

 habitually, the resulting marks have come to signify subjection to 

 powerful persons, living or dead. Concerning all this direct and in 

 direct support of my inference he is silent ; and he thus produces the 

 suppression that it is almost baseless. Moreover, in contesting the 

 conclusion that tatooing was derived from lacerations at funerals, he 

 leaves it to be supposed that this is a mere guess : saying nothing of 

 my quotation from Burton to the effect that these skin-mutilations 



