1914.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 201 



through which passes the doubled suspension cord. The free ends 

 of this cord are knotted within the head around a small stick laid 

 in anterior-posterior position beneath the vertex. Some 8 cm. 

 above the point of issuance, the doubled cord is draAvn into an incom- 

 plete knot, i.e., the end is not pulled through, but doubled back upon 

 itself. A centimeter farther and the doubled cord is again knotted. 

 From this point it continues without further interruption, 335 mm., 

 the loop thus formed of 671 mm. being of sufficient size to permit 

 of passage over the head of the former Jibaro owTier, when the 

 tsantsa was worn suspended around the neck. 



This suspension cord is not twisted, but woven, or rather plaited, 

 with a fairly uniform width of 4 mm. The cut end within the head 

 shows ten strands, and the technique is unquestionably that of the 

 five-loop plaiting described by Dr. Roth.' It possesses the attractive 

 arrangement of strands and the flat under-surface, with slightly 

 convex upper face characteristic of this peculiar process, and a series 

 of experiments in ten-strand cord plaiting failed to reproduce it 

 exactly, until the Warrau five-loop plaiting was tried. The result 

 was more than satisfactory, for rather rapid work with this method 

 gave all the peculiarities seen in the Jibaro cord — the occasional 

 overlapping of one of the strands of the loop by its mate, thus con- 

 cealing the lower, the consequent thickening and narrowing of the 

 cord with the obscuring of the pattern — points which do not appear 

 in Dr. Roth's beautifully regular drawing. It is of interest to note 

 the occurrence of this technique — which would seem to be unre- 

 corded elsewhere — in two such widely separated localities as the 

 Amazonian slopes of the Andes in Ecuador and the Pomeroon Dis- 

 trict of British Guiana; employed, in the one case, by the Jibaros, 

 a tribal group of as yet undetermined affinities,^ and, in the other, 

 by the Warraus, whose relationships also remain to be fixed; and 

 the question arises as to whether this five-loop plait is made also by 

 the people of the far-flung Carib stock. 



While engaged in the study of the Academy's tsantsa, another of 

 these little mummified heads, came under the writer's notice, and 

 it was deemed advisable to include a brief description of it (Plate 



5 Dr. Walter E. Roth, Some Technological Notes from the Pomeroon District, 

 British Guiana. Journal of the R. Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and 

 Ireland, vol. XL, p. 27, Plate VI, figs. 1-.5. 



^ Dr. Rivet, Journ. citu, t. XVIII, p. 338. footnote, promises a detailed study 

 of the language of the Jibaros, based on vocabularies in his possession. Pre- 

 viously available evidence of its affinities was not sufficient to permit of assigning 

 the tribal group to any stock. 



