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Rh GS 61n, GS 55n, and this is often ornamented with flowers by younger members of the sex; whilst in the South the head-dress is merely a scarf such as a Burmese woman carries over her shoulder. The Kaw head-dresses GS 43, 44, 45 (Fig. 28), which are most imposing, are built up of cane upon a series of cane rings, and indicate by their decoration whether the wearer is maid, wife or widow. The women in the British Tai States fold the dress over the bosom, in the Lao States the bust is exposed to the waist by old and young.

The Shans are seldom found away from the alluvial basins and do not regard themselves as hill people. They are good traders, though only on a small scale, but since the pacification of the country under British rule the volume of traffic has steadily increased. Everywhere cultivation is more careful and laborious than in Burma. Rice is the chief crop, but cotton, tobacco, leguminous crops and ground