134 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



until they had made nine clusters of shavings on each pole, each 

 cluster close to a nodal joint. The clusters on the long bamboo 

 consisted each of nine shavings, and the clusters on the shorter 

 bamboo, of eight shavings each, every individual shaving remaining 

 attached by its base to the pole. Each one of the single shavings 

 was then split into three or four or more fine curls, so that a 

 scries of festoons appeared running down the poles, a group of 

 festoons at each node. 



The next process was a mechanical device for the attachment of 

 leaves and flowers. Near each of the four central nodes on the long 

 bamboo, they out a pair of small holes, so that there were eight 

 holes, four on one side, and four on the opposite side of the pole. 

 Similarly, they cut three pairs of holes in the shorter bamboo, near 

 the three central nodes. They inserted long slender sticks into the 

 perforations thus made, letting each stick run through a pair of 

 holes, and project several inches on each side. There were thus 

 eight sticks passing through the trunk of the larger bamboo, and 

 six sticks through the smaller one. The corresponding pairs of 

 perforations in the two poles did not lie exactly in the same hori- 

 zontal plane, and hence the sticks did not meet end to end. Long 

 branches of a plant called ban's that has a slender, glossy-black, 

 stiff stem, were tied to the projecting sticks, every baris stem being 

 split into shreds - - one large shred and eight small shreds for the 

 long bamboo, while the stems for the shorter pole were cut into 

 twelve shreds each. 



The attachment of leaf-pennants and of Mowers completed the 

 decoration of the poles. Great bulla leaves were cut or torn into 



spread from the Ainu to the neighboring people of the Amur region, — the Gilyak, the 

 Orok, the Gold, and the Orochi . . . Judging from Krasheninnikof's description, an anal- 

 ogous phenomenon exists among the Kamchadal, but with the substitution of tibres of 

 sedge-grass for shavings." (p. 430) "The Tnao of the Ainu." Boas anniversary volume, 

 pp. 425—437. 1906. 



Several years earlier, Furness had suggested a like interpretation for the symbolism of 

 the shavings. He says of the Kayans, when they select a camphor tree, "if all omeus are 

 favorable, and they find that the tree is likely to prove rich in camphor, they plant 

 near their hut a stake, whereof the outer surface has been cut into curled shavings and 

 tufts down the sides and at the top. I suggest as possible that these shavings represent 

 the curling tongues of ilame which communicate with the unseen powers)." The Home- 

 life of Borneo Head-hunters, pp. 167 — 168. 1902. 



The Kayans are said to have lost siirht of the significance of this ceremonial clement, 

 and the Bagobo suggested no explanation. 



