nt served the purposes which in more civilised society are
fulfilled by laws.[63] The taboo was a sacred interdiction, a breach of
which was believed of itself to entail disastrous consequences on the
transgressor. The interdiction might be either public or private. To
give examples of public interdictions, when the quantity of breadfruit,
on which the people depended for their subsistence, was from any cause
seriously diminished in a district, the chief had the right to impose a
taboo on bread-fruit trees for twenty months, during which no one might
gather the fruit. This close time allowed the trees to recover their
strength and fertility. Similarly, if fish were scarce, the chief might
pronounce a taboo on the neighbouring bay, or a part of it, in order to
allow the fish to multiply undisturbed and replenish the sea in the
neighbourhood of human habitations. Again, in the prospect of a great
festival, a chief might lay an interdict on pigs for two or three years
in advance, in order that, when the time came, there might be plenty of
pork for the multitude at the banquet. Similarly, when the
paper-mulberry, from which the Marquesans made their bark-cloth,
threatened to give out, the chief might lay the trees under an
interdict for five years, at the end of which the crop was sure to be
magnificent.[64] In these and similar cases the taboo was of public
utility by ensuring a proper supply of the necessaries of life. However,
its imposition was not always guided by rational considerations, and
hence it sometimes failed of its purpose. For example, so long as the
bread-fruit was unripe, almost all kinds of fish were taboo and
therefore might not be eaten, and this interdiction, instead of
alleviating, tended naturally to aggravate the scarcity of food. The
reason for the taboo was a curious superstition that if any one were to
eat fish while the bread-fruit was unripe, the fruit would fall from the
trees.[65]

[61] Mathias G----, _op. cit._ pp. 47 _sq._; Vincendon-Dumoulin
et C. Desgraz, _op. cit._ p. 259.

[62] Radiguet, _op. cit._ p. 153.

[63] Vincendon-Dumoulin et C. Desgraz, _op. cit._ pp. 258 _sq._;
Clavel, _op. cit._ pp. 65 _sq._

[64] Eyriaud des Vergnes, _op. cit._ pp. 35 _sq._ Compare
Radiguet, _op. cit._ p. 155.

[65] Langsdorff, _op. cit._ i. 118.

But the taboo also served a useful purpose by ensuring respect for
private property, which is a fundamental condition of soc