12 COMPRESSION OF THE SKULL. 



was addressed as Kesag'u^ or Taomai^ by her 

 (adopted) relatives, but as Gi(a)om b}^ all others. 

 Children are usually suckled for about two years, 

 but are soon able, in a g-reat measure, to procure 

 their own food, especially shell fish, and when strong* 

 enoug'h to use the stick employed in dig-g'ing* up 

 roots, the}^ are supposed to be able to shift for 

 themselves. A peculiar form of head, which both 

 the Kowrareo-a and Gudanc blacks consider as the 

 beau ideal of beauty, is produced by artificial com- 

 pression during- infancy. Pressure is made by the 

 mother with her hands— as I have seen practised 

 on more than one occasion at Cape York — one being' 

 applied to the forehead and the other to the occiput, 

 both of ^^'hicll are thereby flattened, while the skull 

 is rendered proportionally broader and long-er than 

 it would naturally have been.* 



When the child is about a fortnio-ht old the 

 perforation in the septum of the nose is made by 

 drilling- it Avith a sharp pointed piece of tortoise- 

 shell, but the raised artificial scars, reg-arded as 

 personal ornaments by the Australians and Torres 

 Strait Islanders, are not made until long- afterwards. 

 Accordino- to Gi'om, who states that among- the 

 Kowrareg-as this scarification is purely voluntary, 

 the patient is laid upon the g-round and held there, 

 while the incisions are made with a piece of g-lass 



* Precisely the same form of skull as that alluded to at p. 189, 

 vol. i. : hence it is not unreasonable to suppose that the latter might 

 have been artificially produced. 



