Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/507

Rh bamboo, sometimes two inches in diameter, and worn in the upper lip. When the muscles of this lip contract, they throw the ring upward, so that the nose appears through the hole. But the lips are not alone in the matter of being perforated for insertion of ornaments. The nose is often pierced, and this may be in two ways, either through the septum or through the walls of the nostrils. Captain Cook (quoted by Flower) says of the east Australians: "Their principal ornament is the bone which they thrust through the cartilage which divides the nostrils from each other.... 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 the nostrils that they are forced to keep the month wide open for breath, and snuffle so when they attempt to speak that they are scarcely intelligible to each other."

The ornaments put through the walls of the nose vary greatly. There may be but one perforation in each wall or there may be several. In New Zealand flowers, in New Guinea a boar's tusk, in the Solomon Islands a crab's claw, in New Britain thorns, set upright, are the objects thus worn. These are all original and primitive; after the natives come in contact with whites, these give place to metal buttons and rings. In the Sturgis Collection is a rather pretty nose-ornament from New Guinea. It is V shaped, and the arms fit by stud-shanks, one into each wall of the nose. Nose-ornaments were known to the Jewess of the exile—Ezekiel, xvi, 12, "And I will put a jewel on thy nose"; and Isaiah, iii, 21, "The rings and nose-jewels." The cheeks are pierced by some Eskimos, who wear little round stud buttons in the holes. Ears are pierced the world over. A few cases must suffice. Schweinfurth says that Babucker women pierce the rim of the ears repeatedly and wear therein bits of straw an inch in length, having twenty such, perhaps, in each ear. This repeated piercing of the ear is common among barbarous people, and we have seen a woman of the Sac and Fox Indians who wore seven brass rings in one ear. Ears may be slit and stretched instead of pierced. They then hang in long loops. Catlin gives a picture of an Indian whose beauty had been increased in this way. The Anchorite Islander slits his ears (Fig. 3), while the Fijian often has