Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/813

Rh and brains of deer rubbed in. Among the Eskimos we find some very handsome garments made of bird-skins. These, as other skins, are softened by being chewed between the teeth. These various cases interestingly show the beginnings of tanning.

Nature offers ready-made garments in leaves, and, where modesty is the motive to dress, we find them used. In New Caledonia men wear a single leaf hanging from a girdle, and in New Guinea a belt of leaves or rushes five inches wide and long behind. Kingsmill women wore a long rope of human hair two hundred to three hundred feet long, to which was hung a dress of leaves. Very interesting is the fact that at Madras, once a year, the whole low caste population put aside their ordinary garments and wear leaves. Later we shall refer to this instance again.

Nature is not always so kind as in Brazil, where, Tylor says, a man who wishes a garment goes to a shirt tree. He cuts a four or five foot length of trunk or large branch, gets the bark off in an entire tube, which he has then to soak and beat soft and cut slits in for arm-holes. A short length makes a woman's waist. But bark is used as a dress material widely. Throughout a large portion of Oceania the natives have their tapa, masi, or gnatoo cloth, made by beating the bark of the malo tree. Wood quotes the process of manufacture of the gnatoo:

A circular incision is made around the trees near the roots with a shell, deep enough to penetrate the bark. The tree is then broken off. It is left in the sun for a couple of days to become partly dry, so that the inner and outer bark may be stripped off together without leaving any of it behind. The bark is then soaked in water for a day and a night, and scraped carefully with shells, to remove the outer bark, which is thrown away. It now swells and becomes tougher. Being thus far prepared, beating (tootoo) begins. This is done by a mallet a foot long and two inches thick, two sides horizontally grooved a line in depth, with intervals of a quarter of an inch. The bark, which is two to three feet long and one to three inches broad, is then laid on a beam of wood six inches long and nine inches broad and thick, which is separated from the ground about an inch by bits of wood, so it may vibrate. Placing the bark before her, the woman beats with her right hand, and moves the bark to and fro with her left, so as to beat it evenly, using the grooved side of the mallet first and then the smooth one. Women generally beat alternately and early in the morning. In about half an hour the material is beaten sufficiently thin, and has spread so much laterally as to be square when folded. They double it several times during the process, so as to spread it more equally and to prevent breaking. Thus prepared, it is called fetage. The second part of the operation is called cocanga, or printing with cocoa. The berries of the toe are