April 2 ^^ 1893] 



NATURE 



1S9 



(F'ig- 3). When old Sidiiho Gh6o heard that Modigliani 

 desired skulls (for his anthropological collection), he of 

 course concluded that he wanted to get fresh ones as 

 trophies, and at once offered to organize an expedition 



Fig. 3. — Ornamented trophy skull. 



with chosen warriors"; he would not give away any of 

 those hung under the osale. 



At Hili Dgiono, Modigliani was able to add largely to 

 his ethnological collections, especially weapons. The 



defensive armour of the Niassers is peculiar. Formerly 

 they made singular helmets of rotang and arenga-fibre, 

 with beard and mustachios ; now the chiefs are provided 

 with curious iron helmets, pot-shaped, ornamented with a 

 large plume or palm-leaf cut in a thin iron lamina, usually 

 gilt ; they wear, with this, curious iron spur-like mustachios 

 passing under the nose and secured to the ear. The 

 head-dress of the warrior of " old J apan " was a very 

 similar contrivance ; to complete the parallel I will add 

 that the ceremonial war-jacket, often a regular cuirass 

 in buffalo-leather, pangolin-skin, and scales or twisted 

 rope tissue of tough Gnetum fibres, usually projects 

 widely over each shoulder. It is thus with the war-jacket 

 of some of the Dayak tribes, and was thus with the 

 ceremonial kamiscimo of the Nippon samurai. The 

 Nias shield, baluse, is peculiar, and made in a single 

 board of tough light wood ; in the northern parts of the 

 island a heavier one, called dagne, more akin to Bornean 

 and Celeban shields, is used. The characteristic weapons 

 of the Niassers are the spear {toho) and sword {balldtii), 

 the latter not unlike the Ti'a.yz^ parang. The iron spear- 

 heads are generally small and narrow, simple, or more or 

 less provided with barbs ; the wood is from the NibcSng 

 palm, and usually ornamented with rings of rotang, brass, 

 or wire, and often with tufts of hair from an enemy's head. 

 The sword is still more characteristic. Its sheath is made 

 with two halves neatly fitted and bound together with 

 plaited rotang ; the big sword {balldtu sebua, " number 

 one ") is, especially in the south of Nias, the favourite 

 weapon ; much trouble is taken in ornamenting it, and the 

 carved handle is often a remarkable specimen of wood- 

 carving. Modigliani was fortunate enough to secure 

 a series of these swords with carved handles, giving a 

 most interesting instance of modification of a figure, in 

 this case a boar's head, in the opposite directions of a 

 simplified and a complicated conventionalism (Fig. 4). 

 Moreover, the balldtu sebua of the Southern Niassers is 



Fig. 4.— Carved sword-handles. 



: always provided with a singular appendage, with which 

 the owner never parts willingly : it is an amulet and idol- 

 ibearer in the shape of a spherical basket of twisted 

 •rotang, with various and heterogeneous contents, such as 

 teeth, pieces of stone and bone, &c., alwaysseveral small 



idols roughly carved and anthropomorphous. All these 

 are tied together and more or less wrapped up in a bit of 

 cotton-cloth ; their spherical hoeldr is securely fastened 

 to the scabbard. Dr. Modigliani has given some highly 

 interesting details on this subject ; the ere, or " medicine 



