486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



monial perfumes, such as incense, which, indeed, was designed to 

 affect the worshiper. 



The junction of noses is so general, and described as so forcible 

 in Africa and Oceanica, as to have given rise to a fanciful theory 

 that it had occasioned the flattening of the noses of the peoples. 

 But in the accounts of many of the tribes of the Dark Continent 

 ajid of the islanders of New Zealand, Rotouma, Tahiti, Tonga, 

 Hawaii, and other groups, the essential action does not seem to 

 be that of either pressure or rubbing, but of mutual smelling. 

 It is true that the travelers generally call it rubbing, but the 

 motion and pressure are sometimes no greater than that of the 

 muzzles of two dogs making or cementing acquaintance. The 

 pressure and rub are secondary and emphatic. The juncture only 

 means the compliment, " You smell very good ! " It is illustrated 

 in the Navigator group when the noses of friends are saluted with 

 a long and hearty rub and the explanatory words " Good ! very 

 good ; I am happy now ! " The Calmucks also go through a sug- 

 gestive pantomime of greeting in which they creep on their knees 

 to each other and then join noses, as much as possible like the 

 two dogs before mentioned. In the Navigator Islands only equals 

 mutually rub their noses. The inferior rubs his own nose on and 

 smells the superior's hand. The respectful greeting of Fiji is to 

 take and smell the hand of the superior without rubbing it. In 

 the Gambia when the men salute the women they put the woman's 

 hand up to their noses and smell twice at the back of it. In the 

 Friendly Islands noses are joined, adding the ceremony of taking 

 the hand of the person to whom civilities are paid and rubbing it 

 with a degree of force upon the saluter's own nose and mouth. 

 The Mariana-Islanders formerly smelled at the hands of those to 

 whom they wished to tender homage. Captain Beechy describes 

 of the Sandwich-Islanders : " The lips are drawn inward between 

 the teeth, the nostrils are distended, and the lungs are widely in- 

 flated ; the face is then pushed forward, the noses brought into 

 contact, and the ceremony concludes with a hearty rub." 



Sometimes the smelling and the nose-rub are not mutual, 

 being successively exchanged. The Chittagong-Hill people and 

 the Annamites place the nose upon the friend's cheek and inhale 

 through it strongly. They ask not for a kiss, but for a smell. 

 The Khyoungtha of eastern India apply the mouth and nose to the 

 cheek and give a strong inhalation. The Zuni clasp hands and 

 alternately carry the hand of the friend to the mouth and inhale 

 it. They neither kiss nor smell, but, as they say, " exchange the 

 breath of the life." This action has been erroneously reported as 

 hand-kissing ; and several of those above mentioned, which are 

 accurately described as joining the noses and smelling the cheek 

 or hand, have been mistaken for the kiss, either mutual or single. 



