Another curious fragment goes from cannibalism to the origin of pigs.  A cannibal chief had human victims taken to him regularly, and was in the habit of throwing the heads into a cave close by.  A great many heads had been cast in, and he thought no more about them.  One day, however, he was sitting on a rock outside the cave when he heard an unusual noise.  On looking in, the place was full of pigs, and hence the belief that pigs had their origin in the heads of men, or, as some would call it, a humbling case of evolution downwards!

Cooking.—­The Samoans had and still have, the mode of cooking with hot stones which has been often described as prevailing in the South Sea Islands.  Fifty or sixty stones about the size of an orange, heated by kindling a fire under them, form, with the hot ashes, an ordinary oven.  The taro, bread-fruit, or yams, are laid among the stones, a thick covering of bread-fruit and banana leaves is laid over all, and in about an hour all is well cooked.  In the same oven they bake other things, such as fish, done up in leaves and laid side by side with the taro or other vegetables.  Little bundles of taro leaves, too, mixed with the expressed juice of the cocoa-nut kernel, and some other dishes, of which cocoa-nut is generally the chief ingredient, are baked at the same time, and used as a relish in the absence of animal food.  Salt water is frequently mixed up with these dishes, which is the only form in which they use salt.  They had no salt, and were not in the habit of preserving fish or pork otherwise than by repeated cooking.  In this way they kept pork for a week, and fish for three weeks or a month.  However large, they cooked the entire pig at once; then, using a piece of split bamboo as a carving-knife, cut it up and divided it among the different branches of the family.  The duties of cooking devolved on the men; and all, even chiefs of the highest rank, considered it no disgrace to assist in the cooking-house occasionally.

Forbidden Food.—­Some birds and fishes were sacred to particular deities, as has been described, and certain parties abstained from eating them.  A man would not eat a fish which was supposed to be under the protection and care of his household god; but he would eat, without scruple, fish sacred to the gods of other families.  The dog, and some kinds of fish and birds, were sacred to the greater deities—­the dii majorum gentium of the Samoans; and, of course, all the people rigidly abstained from these things.  For a man to kill and eat anything he considered to be under the special protection of his god, was supposed to be followed by the god’s displeasure in the sickness or death of himself, or some member of the family.  The same idea seems to have been a check on cannibalism, as there was a fear lest the god of the deceased would be avenged on those who might cook and eat the body.