married men did so, they would lose their wives; if young men did so, they would grow weak and enervated.(678) In Timorlaut, married men may not cut their hair for the same reason as in Ceram, but widowers and men on a journey may do so after offering a fowl or a pig in sacrifice.(679) Here men on a journey are specially permitted to cut their hair; but elsewhere men travelling abroad have been in the habit of leaving their hair uncut until their return. The reason for the latter custom is probably the danger to which, as we have seen, a traveller is believed to be exposed from the magic arts of the strangers amongst whom he sojourns; if they got possession of his shorn hair, they might work his destruction through it. The Egyptians on a journey kept their hair uncut till they returned home.(680) “At Tâif when a man returned from a journey his first duty was to visit the Rabba and poll his hair.”(681) The custom of keeping the hair unshorn during a dangerous expedition seems to have been observed, at least occasionally, by the Romans.(682) Achilles kept unshorn his yellow hair, because his father had vowed to offer it to the river Sperchius if ever his son came home from the wars beyond the sea.(683) Again, men who have taken a vow of vengeance sometimes keep their hair unshorn till they have fulfilled their vow. Thus of the Marquesans we are told that “occasionally they have their head entirely shaved, except one lock on the crown, which is worn loose or put up in a knot. But the latter mode of wearing the hair is only adopted by them when they have a solemn vow, as to revenge the death of some near relation, etc. In such case the lock is never cut off until they have fulfilled their promise.”(684) Six thousand Saxons once swore that they would not cut their hair nor shave their beards until they had taken vengeance on their enemies.(685) On one occasion a Hawaiian taboo is said to have lasted thirty years “during which the men were not allowed to trim their beards, etc.”(686) While his vow lasted, a Nazarite might not have his hair cut: “All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head.”(687) Possibly in this case there was a special objection to touching the tabooed man’s head with iron. The Roman priests, as we have seen, were shorn with bronze knives. The same feeling probably gave rise to the European rule that a child’s nails should not be cut during the first year, but that if it is absolutely necessary to shorten them they should be bitten off by the mother or nurse.(688) For in all parts of the world a young child is believed to be especially exposed to supernatural dangers, and particular precautions are taken to guard it against them; in other words, the child is under a number of taboos, of which the rule just mentioned is one. “Among Hindus the usual custom seems to be that the nails of a first-born child are cut at the age of six months. With other