Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/206

from sleeping in the most fetid atmosphere,^[1] nor many savages from eating half-putrid meat.^[2] Many such people who have acquired for generations the habit of eating half-decomposed meat positively enjoy these odours. "What you take for a stink, a Hottentot, if you will believe him, receives as the most agreeable perfume."^[3] Even savages differ in this respect, when residing on the same island. The seaboard natives of most of the large islands of the New Hebrides differ in language from the Bushmen of the interior, and look with much disgust on the latter, among whom the family and dogs lived in such dirt, that a native of the coast told Lieut. Somerville that of the Bushman, or "Man-bush," as spoken there, "'e shtink plenty," not leaving the "house," he said, even to answer the calls of nature.^[4] I well remember, not so many years ago, having, on one of my rambles in the Transvaal, come across a number of Kafir women merrily cutting up a deceased ox on the veld, and I equally remember how I fled to windward of the scene. According to Cameron, the Manyuema not only eat the bodies of animals killed, but also of people who die of disease. "They prepare the corpses by leaving them in running water until they are nearly putrid, and then devour them without any further cooking. They also eat all sorts of carrion, and their odour is very foul and revolting."^[5] In describing the abode in Borneo of some Malay ladies "of quite the highest aristocracy," Mrs. Pryer states:—"The ground underneath the house (for all houses in this country are built on piles) was in a most horrible and unsanitary condition, being wet with green slime, and all the refuse from the house—fish-scrapings, potato-parings, and everything else—being got rid of through the open flooring above, and had putrified, and created a most evil smell; yet here were these people living above in utter unconcern, just as though deprived of the senses of sight and smell."^[6] Even the contents of the

1. Cf. Nansen's graphic description of this fact ('First Crossing of Greenland,' new ed. p. 165).
2. 'Descent of Man,' 2nd edit. p. 18.
3. Kolben, 'Cape of Good Hope,' vol. i. p. 231.
4. 'Journ. Anthrop. Instit.' vol. xxiii. p. 365.
5. 'Across Africa,' vol. i. p. 357.
6. 'A Decade in Borneo,' p. 79.