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In the seven years that Dobrizhoffer spent among these Indians the native word for jaguar was changed thrice, and the words for crocodile, thorn, and the slaughter of cattle underwent similar though less varied vicissitudes.
Disuse, effects of, in producing rudimentary organs; and use of parts, effects of; of parts, influence of, on the races of men. Divorce, freedom of, among the Charruas. Dixon, E.S., on the pairing of different species of geese; on the courtship of peafowl. Dobrizhoffer, on the marriage-customs of the Abipones. Dobson, Dr., on the Cheiroptera; scent-glands of bats; frugivorous bats.
Amongst the degraded Bushmen of S. Africa, "when a girl has grown up to womanhood without having been betrothed, which, however, does not often happen, her lover must gain her approbation, as well as that of the parents." Azara, 'Voyages, etc., tom. ii. p. 23. Dobrizhoffer, 'An Account of the Abipones, vol. ii. 1822, p. 207. Capt. Musters, in 'Proc. R. Geograph. Soc. vol. xv. p. 47.
Dobrizhoffer long ago was aware of there being two kinds of ostriches, he says, "You must know, moreover, that Emus differ in size and habits in different tracts of land; for those that inhabit the plains of Buenos Ayres and Tucuman are larger, and have black, white and grey feathers; those near to the Strait of Magellan are smaller and more beautiful, for their white feathers are tipped with black at the extremity, and their black ones in like manner terminate in white."
Dobrizhoffer says of the Abipones that boys of seven pierce their little arms in imitation of their parents. Among some of the indigenous Australians it is quite customary for ridged and linear scars to be self-inflicted. In Tanna the people produce elevated scars on the arms and chests.
The same feeling was remarked by Dobrizhoffer in South America; for, speaking of an interview with a native tribe to whom he was preaching, he says: The old man, when he heard from me that marriage with relations was forbidden, exclaimed, "Thou sayest well, father, such marriages are abominable; but that we know already."
A similar custom used to be constantly transforming the language of the Abipones of Paraguay, amongst whom, however, a word once abolished seems never to have been revived. New words, says the missionary Dobrizhoffer, sprang up every year like mushrooms in a night, because all words that resembled the names of the dead were abolished by proclamation and others coined in their place.
Dobrizhoffer, the Jesuit missionary, in his curious History of the Abipones, tells us that neither these nor the Guarinies, two of the principal native tribes of Brazil, possessed any word in the least corresponding to our 'thanks. But what wonder, if the feeling of gratitude was entirely absent from their hearts, that they should not have possessed the corresponding word in their vocabularies?
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