emature death through a kind of rabies. They might not
cut or carve salmon, because to do so would seriously endanger their
health, and especially would enfeeble their arms for life. And they had
to abstain from cutting up the grebes which are caught by the Carriers
in great numbers every spring, because otherwise the blood with which
these fowls abound would occasion haemorrhage or an unnaturally
prolonged flux in the transgressor.[239] Similarly Indian women of the
Thompson tribe abstained from venison and the flesh of other large game
during menstruation, lest the animals should be displeased and the
menstrual flow increased.[240] For a similar reason, probably, Shuswap
girls during their seclusion at puberty are forbidden to eat anything
that bleeds.[241] The same principle may perhaps partly explain the
rule, of which we have had some examples, that women at such times
should refrain from fish and flesh, and restrict themselves to a
vegetable diet.

[Similar rules of seclusion enjoined on menstruous women in ancient
Hindoo, Persian, and Hebrew codes.]

The philosophic student of human nature will observe, or learn, without
surprise that ideas thus deeply ingrained in the savage mind reappear at
a more advanced stage of society in those elaborate codes which have
been drawn up for the guidance of certain peoples by lawgivers who claim
to have derived the rules they inculcate from the direct inspiration of
the deity. However we may explain it, the resemblance which exists
between the earliest official utterances of the deity and the ideas of
savages is unquestionably close and remarkable; whether it be, as some
suppose, that God communed face to face with man in those early days,
or, as others maintain, that man mistook his wild and wandering thoughts
for a revelation from heaven. Be that as it may, certain it is that the
natural uncleanness of woman at her monthly periods is a conception
which has occurred, or been revealed, with singular unanimity to several
ancient legislators. The Hindoo lawgiver Manu, who professed to have
received his institutes from the creator Brahman, informs us that the
wisdom, the energy, the strength, the sight, and the vitality of a man
who approaches a woman in her courses will utterly perish; whereas, if
he avoids her, his wisdom, energy, strength, sight, and vitality will
all increase.[242] The Persian lawgiver Zoroaster, who, if we can take
his word for it, derived his code from the