DBESS AND ADORNMENT. 



491 



Fig. 2. Manganya Woman weabeng 

 1'elele. 



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 Austra- 

 lians : " Their principal ornament 

 is the bone which they thrust 

 through the cartilage which di- 

 vides 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 Sacand 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 An- 

 chorite Islander slits his ears (Fig. 3), while the Fijian often has 



