DB^SS AND ADORNMENT. 



199 



■ent grief did not blind the mourner to future convenience, and 

 the joints cut were usually from the fingers of the left hand. In 

 the Andaman Islands, when a child dies it is buried under the 

 house floor and the building is deserted for a time. Finally, the 

 family returns ; the bones are dug up and the mother distributes 

 them among friends as mementoes. These bits of bone are gen- 

 erally worn as parts of necklaces. In Tasmania and Australia 

 portions of the dead are prepared 

 with some care and worn as sa- 

 cred and loved objects. Thus 

 the zygomata are broken from a 

 child's skull, sinews of kangaroo 

 are passed through the orbits, 

 and the whole is worn about the 

 mother's neck. A lower jaw 

 may be carefully and neatly 

 wrapped with sinew cord from 

 one condyle to the other and sup- 

 plied with a suspension cord. 

 Long bones, entire or partial, 

 were wrapped and worn in the 

 same way. These objects were 

 all highly prized, and Bonwick 

 says, " So many skulls and liml) 

 bones were taken by the poor 



natives when they were exiled, Fig. fJ.—DANCE Ornament foe Arm. Made 



that Captain Bateman tells me 

 that, when he had forty with 

 him in his vessel, they had quite a bushel of old bones among 

 them." These were in Tasmania, but similar relics abound 

 among the Andamanese. In Australia drinking-cups were made 

 from the skulls of the nearest and dearest relatives and car- 

 ried everywhere. The lower jaw was removed, the brain ex- 

 tracted, and the skull cleaned ; a rope handle of bulrush fibers 

 was added, and a plug of grass was put in the vertebral aperture. 

 All these may be considered as examples of mourning dress. 

 There has also been a great variety of dress for the corpse itself. 

 To describe such dress in any detail would be too much. Black 

 is often used for shrouds. In the Tales of Hawaii, as narrated by 

 King Kalakaua, frequent reference is made to the wrapping of 

 the dead in the black kapa. In the Society Islands the dead chief 

 is laid out in a special dress of shell. 



In connection with relics of dead friends used as a part of cos- 

 tume, it may be pertinent here to refer to curious preserved heads 

 found among various tribes. They may be simply the heads 

 themselves, as trophies of war or reminders of friends, or they may 



from human jaw-bone and empty nutshells. 

 New Guinea. 



