304 kbcokds of the australian museum. 



2. — Pregnancy Mat. 

 A curious custom exists on the island of Santa Cruz, Solomon 

 Group, where the women, when pregnant, and appearing in public, 

 wear a specially ordered mat on the abdomen. It is ten and 

 three-quarter inches square, made of Pandanus leaf plaited in 

 alternate zones of different colour, a white zone, and a chequered 

 zone (white and black). A border is sewn on of thinner strips, 

 and finished off with thin black runners in three lines, held in 

 position by passing-under one ribbon of the plaiting at regular 

 intervals. Around the edges are attached as ornaments a series 

 of Money Cowries (Cyprtea moneta, Linn.), mouths upwards. The 

 shells are made fast by passing a string through two bored holes. 

 At the four corners the free ends of the plaiting are extended as 

 tags, bound with sinnet, and to each two Cowries are made fast. 

 Mr. A. Mahaffie, Deputy British Resident, Solomon Islands, 

 informed me that it would be a great breach of etiquette for the 

 pregnant woman to appear in public without this mat. 



3. — Wooden Gold-prospecting Dishes. 



Wooden Gold-prospecting dishes from Soepajang, Sumatra, may 

 be regarded as a novelty. They are broad oval shallow dishes, 

 obtusely pointed at one end, but coming to a sharp point and flat 

 shelf-like protuberance at the other; they are round below. The 

 largest is twenty-one and a half inches long, by fifteen inches 

 wide, and three and three-quarter inches deep. Whether these 

 dishes are indigenous, or as used by the Chinese gold-washers, I 

 am unable to say. The dishes were presented by Mr. E. V. 

 Bensusan. 



4. — Trophy Skull and Bag. 



Trophy Skulls from British New Guinea are not uncommon in 

 collections, but the method of carrying these, or at any rate one 

 of the methods, is not so commonly seen. It consists of an oblong 

 bag, fifteen inches long and thirteen inches wide, made of strips of 

 split Pandanus leaf, loosely plaited, smoke dried, and discoloured; 

 plaited loop handles are attached round the mouth. The skull 

 carried in this, although to some extent broken in the malar 

 and zygomatic regions, is a good example of an incised trophy 

 skull, with a narrow pannel carved across the frontal region, and 

 the former incised with roughly executed rhombs. It is from the 

 Fly River Estuary, and was presented by Mr. P. G. Black. 



5. — Shell Money. 



The manufacture of Shell Money has always been a subject of 

 much interest to Ethnologists, and specimens illustrating the 

 process are always welcome in collections. To the courtesy of 

 Mrs. E. E. Kolbe, of Rallum, New Britain, we are indebted for a 

 series of specimens illustrating the method employed in that 



