6] These people who reject eels and fish renounce a
food supply which is abundant in their habitat.

+354. Food taboos in ethnography.+ Some Micronesians eat no
fowl.[1117] Wild Veddahs reject fowl.[1118] Tuaregs eat no fish,
birds, or eggs.[1119] In eastern Africa many tribes loathe eggs
and fowl as food. They are as much disgusted to see a white man
eat eggs as a white man is to see savages eat offal.[1120] Some
Australians will not eat pork.[1121] Nagas and their neighbors
think roast dog a great delicacy. They will eat anything, even an
elephant which has been three days buried, but they abominate
milk, and find the smell of tinned lobster too strong.[1122]
Negroes in the French Congo "have a perfect horror of the idea of
drinking milk."[1123]

+355. Expiation for taking life.+ The most primitive notion we
can find as to taking life is that it is wrong to kill any living
thing except as a sacrifice to some superior power. This dread of
destroying life, as if it was the assumption of a divine
prerogative to do so, gives a background for all the usages with
regard to sacrifice and food. "In old Israel all slaughter was
sacrifice, and a man could never eat beef or mutton except as a
religious act." Amongst the Arabs, "even in modern times, when a
sheep or camel is slain in honor of a guest, the good old custom
is that the host keeps open house for all his neighbors."[1124]
In modern Hindostan food which is ordinarily tabooed may be eaten
if it has been killed in offering to a god. Therefore an image of
the god is set up in the butcher's shop. All the animals are
slaughtered nominally as an offering to it. This raises the
taboo, and the meat is bought and eaten without scruple.[1125]
Thus it is that the taboo on cannibalism may be raised by
religion, or that cannibalism may be made a duty by religion.
Amongst the ancient Semites some animals were under a food taboo
for a reason which has two aspects at the same time: they were
both offensive (ritually unclean) and sacred. What is holy and
what is loathsome are in like manner set aside. The Jews said
that the Holy Scriptures rendered him who handled them unclean.
Holy and unclean have a common element opposed to profane. In the
case of both there is devotion or consecration to a higher power.
If it is a good power, the thing is holy; if a bad power, it is
unc