Sir Richard Burton says, “The Gorilla breeds about December, a cool and dry month; according to my bushmen, the period of gestation is between five and six months.”[137] I have referred this important statement to Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, who writes as follows: “From the maps of rain distribution in Africa in Stanford’s ‘Compendium,’ the driest months in the Gorilla country seem to be January and February, and these would probably be the months of greatest fruit supply.” As regards the Orang-utan, Mr. Wallace adds, “I found the young sucking Orang-utan in May; that was about the second or third month of the dry season, in which fruits began to be plentiful.” Considering, then, that the periodicity of the sexual life rests on the kind of food on which the species lives, together with other circumstances connected with anatomical and physiological peculiarities, and considering, further, the close biological resemblance between man and the man-like apes, we are almost compelled to assume that the pairing time of our earliest human or half-human ancestors was restricted to a certain season of the year, as was also the case with their nearest relations among the lower animals. This presumption derives further probability from there being, even now, some rude peoples who are actually stated to have an annual pairing time, and other peoples whose sexual instinct undergoes most decidedly a periodical increase at a certain time of the year. According to Mr. Johnston, the wild Indians of California, belonging to the lowest races on earth, “have their rutting seasons as regularly as have the deer, the elk, the antelope, or any other animals.”[138] And Mr. Powers confirms the correctness of this statement, at least with regard to some of these Indians, saying that spring “is a literal Saint Valentine’s Day with them, as with the natural beasts and birds of the forest.”[139] As regards the Goddanes in Luzon, Mr. Foreman tells us that “it is the custom of the young men about to marry, to vie with each other in presenting to the sires of their future bride all the scalps they are able to take from their enemies, as proof of their manliness and courage. This practice prevails at the season of the year when the tree—popularly called by the Spaniards ‘the fire-tree’—is in bloom.”[140] Speaking of the Watch-an-dies in the western part of Australia, Mr. Oldfield remarks, “Like the beasts of the field, the savage has but one time for copulation in the year.[141] About the middle of spring ... the Watch-an-dies begin to think of holding their grand semi-religious festival of Caa-ro, preparatory to the performance of the important duty of procreation.”[142] A similar feast, according to Mr. Bonwick, was celebrated by the Tasmanians at the same time of the year.[143]