Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p. 52.
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. vi, p. 173.
Stevens, "Mittheilungen aus dem Frauenleben der Orang Belendas," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Heft 4, p. 167, 1896. Crawley, (Mystic Rose, Ch. VIII, p. 439) gives numerous other instances, even in Europe, with, however, special reference to sexual taboo. I may remark that English people of lower class, especially women, are often modest about eating in the presence of people of higher class. This feeling is, no doubt, due, in part, to the consciousness of defective etiquette, but that very consciousness is, in part, a development of the fear of causing disgust, which is a component of modesty.
Shame in regard to eating, it may be added, occasionally appears as a neurasthenic obsession in civilization, and has been studied as a form of psychasthenia by Janet. See e.g., (Raymond and Janet, Les Obsessions et la Psychasthénie, vol. ii, p. 386) the case of a young girl of 24, who, from the age of 12 or 13 (the epoch of puberty) had been ashamed to eat in public, thinking it nasty and ugly to do so, and arguing that it ought only to be done in private, like urination.