CANNIBAL (derived from a variety in the spelling of Caribs, the original inhabitants of the West India islands, who were reputed to be man-eaters, and some tribes of whom, having no r in their language, pronounced their name Cana), means, like the Greek word antliropophagos, which is often used instead of it, one who feeds on human flesh. The practice is often attributed by classical and early Christian writers to races whose practices they denounce as abominable; but the denunciation is often better evidence of the abhorrence of cannibalism by those making the accusation than of its practice by the accused. Homer makes Polyphemus eat men, but only as one of his other unnatural attributes as a monster. The early Christian writers frequently attributed cannibalism to the unconverted. St. Jerome gives his personal testimony to the practice, stating that when lie was a little boy living in Gaul he beheld the Scots—a people of Britain—eating human flesh; and though there were plenty of cattle and sheep at their disposal, yet would they prefer a ham of the herdsman or a piece of female breast as a luxury. State ments in old authors still more absurd induced some thinkers to believe that cannibalism is unnatural, and to deny that it was ever practiced by human beings expect under the pressure of starvation. The accurate observation of late travelers has, however, put it beyond doubt that cannibalism has been and is systematically practiced. Comte, as part of his system of positive philosophy, accepting of cannibalism as a condition of barbar ism, maintains that the greatest step in human civilization was the invention of slavery, since it put an end to the victor eating the vanquished. The facts, however, which we possess, show that the people systematically addicted to human flesh are not the most degraded of the human race. For instance, in the Australian continent, where the larger animals are scarce, the people, who are of an extremely degraded type, feed on worms and herbs, and have only been known in casual and exceptional conditions to feed on human flesh. The New Zealanders, on the other hand, who are the most highly developed aboriginal race with which late European civilization has had to compete, were, down to a late period, systematic feeders on human flesh, despising the inefficient food which satisfied the natives of Australia. In Angas's Xew Zealand illustrated, there
is a picture of the country mansion of the accomplished chief Ranailiaeta, " one of the finest specimens," says the author, "of elaborately ornamented dwellings yet extant." Its name is Kai Tangata, which means, eat man; and it has been so called in pleasing memorial of the feasts held within its walls. It has been supposed that the reason why, among the Jews and several eastern the eating of swine's flesh was forbidden as an unclean food, was its resemblance to human flesh, and the danger that persons accustomed to the one might not retain their abhorrence of the other. In the crusades, the Saracens charged their CbriAian-eheinies with vating unclean including flesh of men and of swine. In the old romance of Richard cceur de lion, he is represented, on recovering from sickness, as longing for a piece of pork; but that not being procur able, a piece of a Saracen's head was substituted for it, and pronounced by him to be infinitely more palatable. There have been many sad instances where people who naturally had a horror of such food, have been driven by starvation to eat human flesh —as in sieges and shipwrecks. Besides these instances, however, and the systematic can nibals, there is no doubt that people not otherwise habituated to the practice, have been excited by ferocity and revenge to eat, and with relish, the flesh of enemies. In many of the cannibal countries, only the flesh of enemies is consumed. As an instance that this is a natural development of ferocity in degraded natures, we may take the fate of the princess Lamb&le in the French revolution, whose heart was plucked out by one of the savages of the mob, taken to a restaurant, and there cooked and eaten by him. The great chief, sir Ewen Cameron of Locheil, in a death-struggle with an English trooper, killed him by biting a piece out of his throat, and used to say it was the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted.