DEESS AND ADORNMENT. 



49 



Fig. 6. — African Arm Ornament. The Dii'nibar. 



laying, from New Guinea. King Munza's sister begged lead bullets 

 from Schweinfurth and hammered from tliem bright ear-rings. 

 From New Zealand come very pretty ear-rings of grfeen jade in 

 the shape of sharks' teeth. Is it not certain that we here have 

 another example of the law of copying an old form in a new ma- 

 terial ? Did the New 



Zealanders not wear real 

 sharks' teeth, as some 

 Alaskan and British 

 Columbian tribes do 

 now, before they made 

 these more beautiful 

 ones ? Waist - girdles 

 are interesting, not only 

 in themselves, but also 

 because of their influ- 

 ence upon dress devel- 

 opment, already traced. 

 In Australia they are 



often made of finely twisted human hair. Unique in material and 

 really attractive in appearance are the Hottentot girdles made by 

 stringing concave-convex disks of ostrich-egg shell. Such cords 

 looked like a rope of ivory, and sometimes passed quite around 

 the body. Nose ornaments and labrets were spoken of in the lect- 

 ure on Deformations, and we care little to add to what is there 

 said. Mr. Kunz recently showed us some interesting labrets made 

 by the old Mexicans from jade and amethyst that show skillful 

 work. These are all of the hat-shaped pattern, and the one of 

 jade is very large. Were not some of the oldest ornaments 

 known supposed to be hair-pins, we should hardly refer to these. 

 From the lake dwellings of Switzerland we have a large number 

 of these objects very neatly made, in a variety of large and orna- 

 mental patterns, from bronze. Vast quantities of bronze orna- 

 ments of all kinds — rings, arm-bands, wristlets, hair-pins, pendants, 

 etc., have been found on these sites. Feathers are often worked 

 up into wonderfully beautiful decorations. Some Upper Nile 

 peoples use the " supple breast-feathers of the gray pelican, mak- 

 ing them up into close perukes, which form excellent imitations 

 of a luxuriant crop of gray hair." The head-dresses of bird-of- 

 paradise feathers from the South Seas are beautiful in colors 

 and graceful in form. The New Zealander made an elegant 

 head-dress of pelican feathers, arranged in white bunches as 

 wings on each side of the head, meeting above. The " war-bon- 

 nets " of eagle feathers, and the single, neatly wrapped and dec- 

 orated feathers worn by American tribes, are well known. In 

 this connection we may see how ornaments may indirectly en- 



