Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/749

Rh cutting edge of each tooth, producing a serrated border to the whole series (3).

The Malays, however, excel the Africans, both in the universality and in the fantastic variety of their supposed improvements upon nature. While the natural whiteness of the surface of these organs is always admired by us, and by most people, the Malays take the greatest pains to stain their teeth black, which they consider greatly adds to their beauty. White teeth are looked upon with perfect disgust by the Dyaks of the neighborhood of Sarawak. In addition to staining the teeth, filing the surface in some way or other is almost always resorted to. The nearly universal custom in Java is to remove the enamel from the front surface of the incisors, and often the canine teeth, hollowing out the surface, sometimes, but not often, so deeply as to penetrate the pulp cavity (4). The cutting edges are also worn down to a level line with pumice-stone. Another, and less common, though more elaborate fashion, is to point the teeth, and file out notches from the anterior surface of each side of the upper part of the crown, so as to leave a lozenge-shaped piece of enamel untouched; as this receives the black stain less strongly than the parts from which the surface is removed, an ornamental pattern is produced (5). In Borneo a still more elaborate process is adopted: the front surface of each of the teeth is drilled near the center with a small round hole, and into this a plug of brass with a round or star-shaped knob is fixed (6). This is always kept bright and polished by the action of the lip over it, and is supposed to give a highly attractive appearance when the teeth are displayed.

Perhaps the strange custom, so frequently adopted by the natives of Australia, and of many islands of the Pacific, of knocking out one or more of the front teeth, might be mentioned here, but it is usually associated with some other idea than ornament or even mere fashion. In the former case it constitutes part of the rites by which the youth are initiated into manhood, and in the Sandwich Islands it is performed as a propitiatory sacrifice to the spirits of the dead.

The projection forward of the front upper teeth, which we think unbecoming, is admired by some races, and among the negro women of Senegal it is increased by artificial means employed in childhood.

All these modifications of form of comparatively external and flexible parts are, however, trivial in their effects upon the body to those which I shall speak of next, which induce permanent structural alterations both upon the bony framework and upon the important organs within.

Whatever might be the case with regard to the hair, the ears, the nose, and lips, or even the teeth, it might have been thought that the actual shape of the head, as determined by the solid skull, would not have been considered a subject to be modified according to the fashion