Chap, xviii.] CLOTHING OF NATIVES. 



397 



The continuous covering ceased abruptly at these lines, but 

 beyond them were scattered small isolated hairy patches, which 

 formed a sort of gradation to the ordinary bare skin beyond. 

 These small patches, the tailing off of the hairy covering, were 

 regular hairy moles, such as occur so frequently on various 

 parts of the body in Europeans. It would seem therefore not 

 improbable that such moles are in reality small patches of the 

 original coating of long hair of the ancestral man, a small spot 

 of the skin, returning by atavism to its ancestral condition. 



Each organ and each histological tissue in animals and 

 plants has its own special developmental history. May not 

 many morbid growths and pathological changes in the tissues 

 of higher animals and plants be regarded as instances of 

 reversion in the particular tissues to a condition which was 

 normal in their earlier history ? In these the growth of the 

 cells is, as in the embryo, more rapid and less closely restrained 

 by polarity, so that the resulting masses are mostly without 

 definite form. 



Eyebrows were generally absent in the Admiralty Islanders, 

 very probably they were shaved off; the natives made signs 

 when offered razors, that they used obsidian knives for shaving. 



I did not notice that the natives seen at Nares Anchorage 

 had excessively large front teeth. This fact was observed by 

 Miklucho Maclay. Figures are given by him of the teeth. 



The septum of the nose in all the adults is perforated, and 

 the lower margin of the perforation usually dragged down by 

 the suspension of ornaments, so that in a profile view of the 

 face the large aperture in the septum is looked through by the 

 observer. 



Some of the natives, as at Humboldt Bay, have most remark- 

 ably long Jewish noses. About i in every 15 or 20 has such a 

 nose. I at first imagined that this form of nose was produced 

 to some extent by long action of excessively heavy nose orna- 

 ments, but I saw one youth of only 16 or 17 with such a nose 

 very fully developed, and I saw more than one woman with a 

 well-marked arched nose with dependent tip, and the women 

 appear to wear no nose ornaments. 



The lobes of the ears of all tlie men were enlarged, being 

 slit and dragged down into long loops by the weight of 

 suspended ornaments. 



The women wear as their only clothes two bunches of grass, 

 one in front, the other behind. The men wear as their only 

 dress, excepting a white cowry shell, occasionally a narrow 

 strip of bark cloth about five feet long and six or eight inches 

 in breadth, which is almost white when new and clean. The 

 cloth is in the form of a long natural sac, open at both ends, 



