The possession of these rudiments of talent naturally leads {249} to a certain amount of specialisation. It is attested again and again that our uncultured savage communities possess their professional pantomists, jesters and wits. Indeed, we read of crude forms of a comic art among savages so low in the scale as the Australians and the Tasmanians. Thus, Lumholtz writes of the pantomimic dances of the Australian blacks,[211] and Ling Roth assures us that the Tasmanians have their drolls and mountebanks, who exhibit the peculiarities of individuals with considerable force.[212] Among the Sumatrans, again, are to be found “characters of humour,” who by buffoonery, mimicry, punning, repartee and satire are able to keep the company in laughter at intervals during a night’s entertainment.[213] In some cases jesters are appointed by a chief, just as a fool used to be selected by one of our kings. In Samoa every chief has his regular clown, a privileged person who, among other liberties, is allowed that of taking the food out of the chiefs mouth.[214] A privileged buffoon in Kanowit, who had been given an old gun, told the Resident that he had killed fourteen deer with one bullet. The Resident being puzzled, he explained that he had cut the bullet out each time.[215] Here we have the exact counterpart to the trick of the European clown of the circus. Among the Eskimo of Greenland, it seems, there is a regular performance in which the aspiring “funny men” compete for popular favour. After a repast they get up, one after the other, each exhibiting his musical resources by beating a drum and singing, and adding a touch of the actor’s art by making comical gestures, and playing ridiculous tricks with the face, head and limbs.[216] Much the same kind of contest takes place {250} in connection with their peculiar ordeals, already referred to. Each of the two litigants tries to make the other ridiculous, by singing satirical songs and relating misdeeds; and the one who succeeds in getting the audience to laugh most at his jibes or invectives is pronounced the conqueror. Even such serious crimes as murder are often expiated in this merry fashion.[217] In one or two cases we read of more elaborate entertainments. Thus, some of the natives of the Western Pacific have a regular masquerade performed before the King, into which may enter a histrionic representation of a British sailor with his cutlass, acted by a leading buffoon, who combines with the _rôle_ of a “premier” the “fool’s” privilege of breaking through the strict laws of decorum by pointing to the King and asking ironically if that was the King—amid shouts of laughter.[218]