Among the hill tribes of the Central Indian Hills may be traced a
desire to secure communion with the spirit of fertility embodied
in vegetation. This appears, for instance, in a tree-dance, which
is carried out on a date associated not only with the growths of
the crops or with harvest, but also with the seasonal period for
marriage and the annual Saturnalia. (W. Crooke, "The Hill
Tribes," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, new series,
vol. i, 1899, p. 243.) The association of dancing with seasonal
ritual festivals of a generative character--of which the above is
a fairly typical instance--leads us to another aspect of these
phenomena on which I have elsewhere touched in these _Studies_
(vol. i) when discussing the "Phenomena of Periodicity."

The Tahitians, when first discovered by Europeans, appear to have
been highly civilized on the sexual side and very licentious. Yet
even at Tahiti, when visited by Cook, the strict primitive
relationship between dancing and courtship still remained
traceable. Cook found "a dance called Timorodee, which is
performed by young girls, whenever eight or ten of them can be
collected together, consisting of motions and gestures beyond
imagination wanton, in the practice of which they are brought up
from their earliest childhood, accompanied by words which, if it
were possible, would more explicitly convey the same ideas. But
the practice which is allowed to the virgin is prohibited to the
woman from the moment that she has put these hopeful lessons in
practice and realized the symbols of the dance." He added,
however, that among the specially privileged class of the Areoi
these limitations were not observed, for he had heard that this
dance was sometimes performed by them as a preliminary to sexual
intercourse. (Hawkesworth, _An Account of the Voyages_, etc.,