ADORNMENTS 



347 



the body by means of extraneous objects is also found among 

 animals. The male bower bird, who builds a bower for himself 

 and for the hen he wishes to attract, decorated with variegated 

 stones, shells and feathers, will take a pretty feather or brightly 

 coloured leaf in his beak and dance in and out of his arbour 

 with it (Fig. 173). 



This, indeed, is but a solitary instance, and is of slight im- 

 portance compared to the universal desire for ornament which 

 man has displayed from the earliest times. But I cannot agree 

 with Waitz that the endeavour to decorate his body in some 





FIG. 173. The spotted bower bird (Chlamydera moculata). (Brehm.) 



way constitutes a specific difference between man and other 

 animals. Although, as we have seen, no absolute difference 

 exists, the relative difference is extraordinarily great, seeing 

 how manifold are the ways in which man's desire for ornament 

 manifests itself. 



In the first place, the coloured earths which are found in 

 nearly all palaeolithic settlements probably served for painting 

 and ornamenting the body, possibly also with the addition of 

 tattooing, for which the small flint knives of the Madeleine 

 period may have been used. Then there were necklaces of 

 teeth, small stones, shells of snails or mussels (Fig. 174), 



