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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



attempts to solve them being little more than guesses. Some of them 

 have become associated with religious or superstitious observances, 

 and so have been spread and perpetuated ; some have been vaguely 

 thought to be hygienic in motive ; most have some relation to con- 

 ventional standards of improved personal appearance ; but, whatever 

 their origin, the desire to conform to common usage, and not to 

 appear singular, is the prevailing motive which leads to their con- 

 tinuance. 



The most convenient classification of these customs will be one 

 which is based upon the part of the body affected by them, and I will 

 begin with the more superficial and comparatively trivial the treat- 

 ment of the hair and other appendages of the skin. 



Fig 1. Australian Native, with Bone Nose-Oenament. 



Here we are at once introduced to the domain of Fashion in her 

 most potent sway. The facility with which hair lends itself to various 

 methods of treatment has been a temptation too great to resist in all 

 known conditions of civilization. Innumerable variations of custom 

 exist in different parts of the world, and marked changes in at least 

 all more or less civilized communities have characterized successive 

 epochs of history. Not only the length and method of arrangement, 

 but even the color of the hair, is changed in obedience to caprices of 

 fashion. In many of the islands of the Western Pacific, the naturally 

 jet-black hair of the natives is converted into a tawny brown by the 

 application of lime, obtained by burning the coral found so abundantly 

 on their shores ; and, not many years since, similar means were em- 

 ployed for producing the same result among the ladies of Western 

 Europe a fact which considerably diminishes the value of an idea 



