Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/743

Rh entertained by many ethnologists, that community of custom is evidence of community of origin or of race.

Notwithstanding the painful and laborious nature of the process, when conducted with no better implements than flint knives, or pieces of splintered bone or shell, the custom of keeping the head closely shaved prevails extensively among savage nations. This, doubtless, tends to cleanliness, and perhaps comfort, in hot countries; but the fact that it is in many tribes practiced only by the women and children shows that these considerations are not those primarily engaged in its perpetuation. In some cases, as among the Feejeeans, while the heads of the women are commonly cropped or closely shaved, the men cultivate, at great expense of time and attention, a luxuriant and elaborately arranged mass of hair, exactly reversing the conditions met with in the most highly civilized nations.

In some regions of Africa it is considered necessary to female beauty carefully to eradicate the eyebrows, special pincers for the purpose forming part of the appliances of the toilet; while the various methods of shaving and cutting; the beard among men of all nations are too well known to require more than a passing notice. The treatment of finger-nails, both as to color and form, has also been subject to fashion; but the practical inconveniences attending the inordinate length to which these are permitted to grow in some parts of the east of Asia appear to have restricted the custom to a few localities.

If time allowed, the exceedingly widespread custom of tattooing the skin might be here considered, as a result of the same propensity as that which produces the other more serious deformations, now to be spoken of; but it will be as well to pass at once to these.

The nose, the lips, and the ears have, in almost all races, offered great temptations to be used as foundations for the display of ornament, some process of boring, cutting, or alteration of form being necessary to render them fit for the purpose. When Captain Cook, exactly one hundred years ago, was describing the naked savages of the east coast of Australia, he said: "Their principal ornament is the bone which they thrust through the cartilage which divides the nostrils from each other. What perversion of taste could make them think this a decoration, or what could prompt them, before they had worn it or seen it worn, to suffer the pain and inconvenience that must of necessity attend it, is perhaps beyond the power of human sagacity to determine. As this bone is as thick as a man's finger, and between five and six inches long, it reaches quite across the face, and so effectually stops up both the nostrils that they are forced to keep their mouths wide open for breath, and snuffle so when they attempt to speak that they are scarcely intelligible even to each other. Our seamen, with some humor, called it their spritsail-yard; and, indeed, it