TATTOOING. 135 



excursions rarely passed a pretty flower without plucking it and 

 placing it in their bushy hair ; and they were fond of decorating ray 

 helmet in a similar fashion. Sometimes one individual would adorn 

 himself to such an extent with flowers, ferns, and scented leaves, 

 that a botanist micrht have made an instructive canture in seizinor 

 his person. In addition to the flowers placed in his bushy mass of 

 blackish-brown hair, he would tuck under his necklace and armlets 

 sprigs and leaves of numerous scented plants, such as Evodia horfensis 

 and Ocymum sanctum. He would take much pleasure in pointing 

 out to me the plants whose scented leaves are employed in the 

 native perfumery, most of which are of the labiate order, and are to 

 be commonly found in the waste ground of the plantations. The 

 women seldom decorate themselves in this manner. Those of Bou- 

 gainville Straits make their scanty aprons of the leaves of a scita- 

 mineous plant named "bassa" which, when crushed in the fingers^ 

 have a pleasant scent. 



The fondness for decorating the person with flowers and scented 

 herbs has been frequently referred to by travellers in their accounts 

 of the natives of other parts of the Western Pacific. Mr. George 

 Forster tells us that the people of Tanna and Mallicolo in the New 

 Hebrides place inside their shell armlets bunches of the odoriferous 

 plant, Evodia hortensis, together with the leaves of crotons and 

 other plants.! We learn from Mr. Macgillivray,^ and from Mr. 

 Stone,^ that the natives of the south-east part of New Guinea are 

 similarly fond of decorating themselves with flowers and scented 

 leaves which they place in the hair and inside their armlets and 

 necklaces. 



Tattooing is practised amongst both sexes in many islands ; but 

 the process difiers from that ordinarily employed in the circumstance 

 that the pigment is frequently omitted, and for this reason the 

 marks are often faint and only visible on a close inspection. In 

 this manner the natives of St.. Christoval and the adjacent islands 

 have their cheeks marked by a number of shallow grooves arranged 

 in a series of clievron-lines, and differing but little if at all from the 

 general colour of the skin. On the trunk the lines are of a faint 

 blue hue, and hex'e a pigment is more frequently used. The process, 

 as employed in the island of Santa Anna, consists in deeply abrading 



^ "A Voyage round the World," by George Forster, London, 1777 ; (page 276.) 

 2 "Voyage of H.M.S. ' Pvattlesnake, '" by John Macgillivray ; London, 1852. 

 * "A few months in New Guinea," by O. C. Stone ; Loudon, 1880. 



