26 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIOISTAL MUSEUM vol. 79 



Papua and Neio Guinea. — The desire for ornament is very marked 

 amonir tlie dark-skinned islanders of Papua and Melanesia. The 

 specimens exhibited in the National Museum from New Guinea con- 

 sist of costumes of fiber, arm and neck ornaments of feathers, shells, 

 teeth, weapons, basketry, etc. ; headdress, combs ; carved wood spatu- 

 las, decorated gourd and bamboo vessels, etc. There are also shown 

 wood carvings from the Solomon Islands. The recent explorations 

 of Stirling in the interior of Dutch New Guinea, and of Brandes in 

 British New Guinea and the territory of Papua in the east, have 

 given the Museum a most extensive and representative Papuan and 

 Negrito collection, while the great collections from Malaysia obtained 

 by W. L, Abbott can perhaps never be duplicated. 



It appears that in Oceania geometrical designs are almost always 

 traceable to some anthropomorphic or zoomorphic or phyllomorphic 

 motive more or less conventionalized. Thus in the bark belts col- 

 lected by Abbott and Brandes the human face has been applied as a 

 decorative pattern. Eye forms are occasionally plainly recogniz- 

 able. On combs and wooden clubs are etched the curved beak and eye 

 of the frigate bird. This design is conventionally modified into 

 meandered interlocking spirals with the eye placed at each point of 

 intersection. The beak alone is represented occasionally in Mel- 

 anesian art as scrolled arabesques. 



The Papuan tribes excel the Australians in the plastic modeling 

 of human and animal forms in a peculiar manner. A framework is 

 constructed, covered with bark and painted white. Masks are 

 so constructed and are rather terrible examples of realism in the 

 form of masks and headdresses of heroic size. Such huge masks are 

 supported by attendants holding bamboo staves, and have therefore 

 little ornamental and art value. Painted lines and angles and a 

 host of smaller devices in color fill in the facial planes, which are 

 done in unconventional manner or free style. In New Guinea the 

 more realistic efforts, which, as mentioned, are quite lacking in 

 Australia, occur in typical Papuan painted form. The origin of 

 this art must lie in the proximity of the Sulka and other coastal 

 Papuan tribes in contact with old Malayan art. 



Negntos and Papuans of central Dutch Neio Guinea. — The recent 

 Stirling-Smithsonian expedition to the highlands of central Dutch 

 New Guinea, under the leadership of Matthew W. Stirling, has 

 achieved some striking and important results. Negrito groups of 

 the Nassau Mountains, hitherto unvisited by white men, and Papuans 

 of the central lake plain, which lies between the Nassau Mountains 

 on the south and the Van Rees Mountains on the north, are now 

 made known to science for the first time. 



