Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/410

 Papuans, the Polynesians and the Australians, though among the negritos and some of the pigmy races of Africa brachycephalic skulls are the rule. Of the yellow races the Eskimo is the most dolichocephalic. Of white races the Arabs and Kabyles of Algeria, and the Guanchos of the Canary Islands, are most notable for dolichocephalic tendency. Dolichocephaly is sometimes frontal, as among adult whites, sometimes occipital or confined to the back of the head, as among inferior negro-races, Australians, Papuans and newly-born whites.

 DOLL, a child’s plaything in the shape of a human figure or taken as representing one. The word “doll” was not in common use in the middle ages, “children’s babies” and other terms being substituted for it; the commonly accepted view is that it is abbreviated from the name Dorothy (cf. Scottish “Doroty”). “Idol” has also been connected with it; but the accent is held to tell against this. Another derivation is from Norse daul (woman), with which may be compared O.H.G. toccha, M.H.G. docke, a girl, doll, used also in the sense of butterfly, nightmare, &c., thus connecting the doll with magic and superstition. The same connexion is found in Asia Minor, South India, among the Pueblo peoples and in South Africa; philology apart, therefore, the derivation from “idol” has much to recommend it, and some side influence from this word may well have caused the selection of the form “doll.” Dolls proper should be distinguished from (a) idols, (b) magical figurines, (c) votive offerings, (d) costume figures. The festival figures of Japan, like the bambino of Italy, given to the child only on certain saints’ days, hardly come within the category of dolls.

Dolls were known in ancient Egypt (XVIIIth Dynasty) and Asia Minor; they were common both in Greece and Rome; Persius mentions that girls vowed them to Venus when they got married; dolls found in the catacombs are preserved in the Vatican and the Museum Carpegna. The  (Lat. crepundia) of Greek finds of the 6th and later centuries was a marionette. Dolls were in use among the Arabs at the time of Mahomet, and the prophet’s nine-year-old wife Ayesha is said to have induced him to join her in her play with them. Although Mahommedanism prohibits the making of figures in human shape, dolls do not seem to have disappeared from Mahommedan countries, though substitutes for them are perhaps more common there than elsewhere.

Dolls are extremely common in Africa. There seem to be forms peculiar to different regions, such as the flat, spade-shaped figure on the Gold Coast. Among the Wasaramo the girls carry from the age of puberty till the birth of their first child an object indistinguishable from the ordinary doll; it is called mwana ya kiti (stool-child) because it is placed on a stool at home; it probably has a magical significance. The same may be said of the Australian figurines; others, made of cane, are undoubtedly children’s dolls; excellently moulded wax figures are also found. In Asia dolls properly so-called are apparently rare; but there are specimens in museums from the Malay peninsula, Persia and South India, and in Asia Minor children use cushions, &c., as surrogates. They are found in Alaska among the Eskimo. Most Red Indian tribes had them; a mother who has lost her child carries its dolls and other playthings. Cortes is said to have found Montezuma and his court playing with elaborate dolls; they have been dug up from prehistoric Peruvian graves. In the Gran Chaco metacarpal bones of the rhea are in use, wrapped in a blanket when they represent male, in a petticoat when they are female.

But little attention has been paid to the psychological side of dolls. Though many boys play with them, dolls are mainly confined to girls; and female dolls predominate in the proportion of twelve to one. The culmination of the doll instinct is between the age of eight and nine; but they are not entirely dropped till much later; in fact unmarried and childless women sometimes keep it up for years. In children it is said by Hall to be by no means always a manifestation of the maternal instinct; for dolls are not always regarded as children, and the proportion of adults increases with the age of the children. But the important point is whether the child regarded itself as older or younger than the doll. There is, on the other hand, a tendency to neglect dolls for babies and a reverse current of love of dolls which arises out of love of babies.

 DOLLAR, a town of Clackmannanshire, Scotland, 6 m. N.E. of Alloa by the North British railway, not far from the Devon. Pop. (1901) 1619. The village, which is beautifully situated, contains several handsome stone villas occupied by families attracted to the town by its educational facilities. The academy, housed in a fine mass of buildings of the Grecian order (opened about 1819), was founded by Captain John McNab (1732–1802), a native who began life as a herdboy, and afterwards became a rich shipowner. From the burn of Dollar (or Dolour), which runs through the ravine of Dollar Glen, the town draws its water-supply. On an isolated hill above the junction of the parent streams, named Sorrow and Care, stands the ruin of Castle Campbell, known also as Gloom Castle, an old stronghold of the Argyll family. The castle was burned by the Macleans in 1644, in the interest of the marquess of Montrose, and not again restored. Although a ruin it is carefully preserved. The Rev. Dr James Aitken Wylie (1808–1890), the historian of Protestantism, was a minister in Dollar for several years. Patrick Gibson, the etcher and landscape-painter, was drawing-master at the academy from 1824 to 1829, and William Tennant, the author of Anster Fair, was a teacher of classics from 1819 till 1834, when he was appointed to the chair of Hebrew in St Andrews University. Harviestoun Castle, about midway between Dollar and Tillicoultry, once belonged to the Tait family, and here Archibald Campbell Tait, archbishop of Canterbury, spent some of his boyhood.

 DOLLAR, a silver coin at one time current in many European countries, and adopted under varying forms of the name elsewhere. The word “dollar” is a modified form of thaler, which, with the variant forms (daler, dalar, daalder, tallero, &c.), is said to be a shortened form of Joachimsthaler. This Joachimsthaler was the name given to a coin intended to be the silver equivalent of the gold gulden, a coin current in Germany from the 14th century. In 1516 a rich silver mine was discovered in Joachimsthal (Joachim’s dale), a mining district of Bohemia, and the count of Schlitz, by whom it was appropriated, caused a great number of silver coins to be struck (the first having the date 1518), bearing an effigy of St Joachim, hence the name. The Joachimsthaler was also sometimes known as the Schlickenthaler. The first use of the word dollar in English was as applied to this silver coin, the thaler, which was current in Germany at various values from the 16th century onwards, as well as, more particularly, to the unit of the German monetary union from 1857 to 1873, when the mark was substituted for the thaler. The Spanish piece-of-eight (reals) was also commonly referred to as a dollar. When the Bank of England suspended cash payments in 1797, and the scarcity of coin was very great, a large number of these Spanish coins, which were held by the bank, were put into circulation, after having been countermarked at the Mint with a small oval bust of George III., such as was used by the Goldsmiths’ Company for marking plate. Others were simply overstamped with the initials G.R. enclosed in a shield. In 1804 the Maundy penny head set in an octagonal compartment was employed. Several millions of these coins were issued. These Spanish pieces-of-eight were also current in the Spanish-American colonies, and were very largely used in the British North American colonies. As the reckoning was by pounds, shillings and pence in the British-American colonies, great inconveniences naturally arose, but these were to some extent lessened by the adoption of a tariff list, by which the various gold and silver coins circulating