Note 60.1 — THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

In Fiji the rite of circumcision used to be followed by sexual orgies in which brothers and sisters appear to have been intentionally coupled. See Rev. Lorimer Fison, “The Nanga, or Sacred Stone Enclosure of Wainimala, Fiji,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiv. (1885) pp. 27-30, with the note of Sir Edward B. Tylor on pp. 28 sq.; Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 145-148. Such periods of general licence accorded to the whole community are perhaps best explained as temporary revivals of an old custom of sexual communism. But this explanation seems scarcely applicable to cases like those cited in the text, where the licence is not granted to the whole people but enjoined on a few individuals only in special circumstances. As to other apparent cases of reversion to primitive sexual communism, see Totemism and Exogamy, i. 311 sqq.