“It is a pity that men in a savage state should take delight in doing that which is nasty, but such is the fact. It is a very common custom for the tribe, or that portion of it who are related to the one who has died, to rub themselves with the moisture that comes from the dead friend. They rub themselves with it until the whole of them have the same smell as the corpse.”—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 131.) But in a footnote he adds that some of the Australians will not touch a dead body with the naked hand. In the mortuary ceremonies of the Encounter Bay tribe (South Australians), “the old women put human excrement on their heads,—the sign of deepest mourning.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 113.) The corpse of an Australian chief was surrounded “with wailing women, smeared with filth and ashes.”—(“Native Tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, p. 75, received through the kindness of the Royal Society, New South Wales, Sydney, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.) “In the burial ceremonies, the women of many tribes besmear or plaster their heads with excrement and pipe-clay.”—(Personal letter from John F. Mann, Esq., dated Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales.) “When a child dies, women who carried it in their hands must throw their jackets away if the child has urinated on them. This is part of the custom that everything that has come in contact with a dead person must be destroyed.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Boas, p. 612.) The Kootenays of Canada have a ceremonial aspersion after funerals. “When those who have buried the body return, they take a thorn bush, dip it into a kettle of water, and sprinkle the doors of all lodges.”—(“Report on the Northwest Tribes of Canada,” Dr. Franz Boas, to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne meeting, 1889, p. 46.) Describing Italian funerals, Blunt says: “When the procession has reached the church, the bier is set down in the nave, and the officiating priest, in the course of the appointed service, sprinkles the body with holy water three times,—a rite in all probability ensuing from that practised by the Romans, of thrice sprinkling the bystanders with the same element.”—(“Vestiges,” p. 183.)