Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/748

728 either have been perpetuated for an enormous lapse of time, if the supposition of a common origin be entertained, or else have developed themselves independently.

These are, however, only extreme or exaggerated cases of the almost universal custom of making a permanent aperture through the lobe of the ear for the purpose of inserting some adventitious object by way of adornment, or even for utility, as in the man of the Island of Mangea, figured in Cook's "Voyages," who carries a large knife through a hole in the lobe of the right ear. Among ourselves, the custom of wearing earrings still survives, even in the highest grades of society, although it has been almost entirely abandoned by one half of the community, and in the other the perforation is reduced to the smallest size compatible with the purpose of carrying the ornament suspended from it.

The teeth, although allowed by the greater part of the world to retain their natural beauty and usefulness of form, still offer a field for artificial alterations according to fashion, which has been made use of principally in two distinct regions of the world and by two distinct races. It is, of course, only the front teeth, and mainly the upper incisors, that are available for this purpose. Among various tribes of negroes of Equatorial Africa, different fashions of modifying the natural form of these teeth prevail, specimens of which may be found in any large collection of crania of these people. One of the simplest consists of chipping and filing away a large triangular piece from the lower and inner edge of each of the central incisors, so that a gap is



produced in the middle of the row in front (Fig. 5, 1). Another fashion is to shape all the incisors into sharp points, by chipping off the corners, giving a very formidable crocodilian appearance to the jaws (2); and another is to file out either a single or a double notch in the