Reclus[34] tells us that among the various Siberian tribes aged and sickly people who are useless are asked if they have “had enough of it.” It is a matter of duty and honor on their part to reply “yes.” Thereupon an oval pit is roughly excavated in a burial ground and filled with moss. Heavy stones are rolled near, the extremities of the victim are bound to two horizontal poles, and on the headstone a reindeer is slaughtered, its blood flowing in torrents over the moss. The old man stretches himself upon this warm red couch. In the twinkling of an eye he finds that he is securely bound to the poles. Then he is asked “Art thou ready?” At this stage of the proceeding it would be folly to articulate a negative response. Moreover, his friends would pretend not to hear it. So his _moriturus saluto_ is “Good night, friends.” They then stop his nostrils with a stupefying substance and open his carotid and a large vein in his arm, so that he is bled to death in no time. Among most races, Reclus tells us, children are killed by being exposed; the old, by being deserted. In Terra del Fuego, Darwin tells how Jimmy Buttons, a native, described the slaughter of the aged in winter and famine. Dogs, he said, catch otters; old women, not. He then proceeded to detail just how they were killed, imitated and ridiculed their cries and shrieks, told the parts of their bodies that were best to eat, and said they must generally be killed by friends and relatives. Among the Hottentots, when their aged men and women can “no longer be of any manner of service in anything,” they are conveyed by an ox, accompanied by most of the inhabitants of the kraal, to a solitary hut at a considerable distance and, with a small stock of provisions, laid in the middle of the hut, which is then securely closed. The company returns, deserting him forever. They think it the most humane thing they can do to thus hasten the conclusion of life when it has become a burden. With at least one of the Papuan races in New Guinea, people when old and useless are put up a tree, around which the tribe sing “The fruit is ripe” and then shake the branches until the victim falls, tearing him to pieces and eating him raw. Among the Damaras the sick and aged are often cruelly treated, forsaken, or burned alive. In some of the East African tribes the aged and all supposed to be at the point of death are slain and eaten. One author tells us that among the Fijians the practice of burying alive is “so common that but few old and decrepit people are to be seen.” In Herbert Spencer’s anthropological charts we are told that among the Chippewas “old age is the greatest calamity that can befall a northern Indian for he is neglected and treated with disrespect.”