Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/541

Rh arms spoken of in the old fables—arms which after having struck the mark, come back themselves to their possessor.

V. Dress.—If I point out some facts relative to dress, it is to show you how much of connection, of real resemblance, there is between the most savage and the most civilized people.

Everywhere and always man has sought to embellish himself. Sometimes by acting on himself, sometimes by borrowing the elements of his dress from without. In the tombs discovered from time to time which inclose the remains of men with their stone hatchets, used in France against the elephant and rhinoceros, in those tombs, I say, we find collars (Fig. 6) made of morsels of shells or small corals



which had not, in the eyes of their possessors, a less value than the precious stones have for us. We might almost define man as a being who ornaments himself; and certainly here is a great difference separating him from the animals. I shall not dwell on the different materials taken from the exterior world to cover our bodies and embellish us. Were you to see a woman of Tahiti in grand costume, you would remark that when our grandmothers had contrived the panniers, and the women of our day the crinoline, they only borrowed from the children of the South Sea a part of their attire.

It is worthy of attention that, under the pretext of embellishing himself, man has almost always sought to modify his own body. So the Chinese women, in order to make their feet very small, cripple themselves in so grave a manner that often the little children succumb in the operation. The bones of the heel, in place of elongating behind, are violently displaced and directed downward, so that the women walk on their own heels as on the heels of their shoes. The toes are likewise turned under, the big toe alone being in place. Our women do not go so far; but you know women who, to make the feet small, fear not to give themselves corns, and many men do the same.

At the Philippines, the group of isles that you see at the east of Asia, is a people whose women attach great importance to having the