BELIEFS OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES.--Whenever such cases happen, it is under the influence of some very strong emotion, during the period of gestation, arising from the action on the nervous system of the mother by an external object presented to the sight, the organ of which would seem to have an intimate association with the general muscular system. There is nothing to show that primitive peoples recognized the action of prenatal influence through the senses; but there is a very curious custom, which is so widespread at the present time that we may well suppose it to have been formerly almost universal, dependent upon the imagined effect of the eating of animal flesh. All primitive peoples believe that a man acquires physical or mental characteristics from animals of whose flesh he partakes. Cannibalism is closely connected with this notion, as the man who eats part of the body of a foe is thought to become endowed with the victim's courage, strength or other special quality. Probably the Mosaic regulations as to unclean animals, that is, animals unfit for food, was based on such an idea; and certainly the command to abstain from eating blood was thus connected; as we are told the blood is the life, and if so, then it must be the carrier of vital influences. The custom above referred to, which is known to ethnologists as _la couvade_, or "hatching," supposes injurious action on the organism of the child of food eaten by its parents, as appears from the facts brought together by Dr. E. B. Tylor in his "Researches into the Early History of Mankind." The couvade usually has reference to the period immediately following the birth of a child; but among the native tribes of South America, where it is more extensively prevalent than elsewhere, it is observed while the child is still unborn. Thus, in Brazil, according to Von Martius, "A strict regimen is preserved before the birth; the man and the woman refrain for a time from the flesh of certain animals, and live chiefly on fish and fruits." The peculiarity of the couvade custom, and that which gives it its special interest, is the fact that it usually concerns the father and not the mother, as injury to the child is supposed to be due to the conduct of the former rather than of the latter. Thus, among the Land Dyaks of Borneo, "The husband, before the birth of his child, may do no work with a sharp instrument, except what is necessary for the farm; nor may he fire guns, nor strike animals, nor do any violent work, lest bad influences should affect the child; and after it is born the father is kept in seclusion indoors for several days, and dieted on rice and salt, to prevent not his own but his child's stomach from swelling."