ROTH] FEATHERS AND FEATHERWORK 125 
83. If a feather is to be employed on an arrow (pl. 19) it is 
subjected to certain preliminaries (A), in that it is first cut across (a) 
its base to leave a length of about 4 inches, the barbs of the smaller 
segment of vane removed by slicing along (6) the midrib, the barbs 
at the tip (c) and base of the larger segment cleared away (d), and 
the free base of the midrib split in the same plane as the vane. 
Two feathers having been thus prepared, they are fixed in position 
by tying their thinner free extremities toward the butt end of the 
arrow shaft, care being taken that they lie in the same plane as the 
arrow tip. The attachment of the barbed portions of the two 
midribs is next effected in one of at least four methods, which, from 
their resulting appearance, may be described as the diamond (B), 
claw (C), bar (D), and spiral (E). The feathers being fixed back 
to back, when looked at from the sides, the surface of one is convex 
and that of the other concave. The material for tying is cotton or 
kuraua. The progressive construction of the claw is shown in F; 
that of the bar and the spiral can present no difficulties; the dia- 
mond, where the use of cotton is invariable, is shown in plate 20. 
Once the vane portions of the feathers have been fixed on one or 
other of the above lines, the two halves into which the free bases of 
their midribs have been split are crossed at a very open angle, and 
in that position spread upon the convexity of the arrow shaft 
(pl. 19 D), and so fixed in position by overcasting. 
84. The cultivation of artificially colored feathers seems to have 
been an old practice in the western Guianas and beyond. Von 
Humboldt gives the earliest record of it from the upper Orinoco 
when he speaks of a frog . . . allied to the Rana tinctoria, the blood 
of which, it is asserted, introduced into the skin of a parrot, in 
places where the feathers have been plucked out, occasions the 
growth of frizzled*feathers of a yellow or red color (AVH, uy, 313). 
Similarly, Wallace, among the Uaupes River Indians, described 
how the colors of certain birds’ feathers were altered for the 
decoration of the acangatéra or headdress. The feathers, he says, 
are entirely from the shoulders of the great red macaw; but they 
are not those that the bird naturally possesses, for these Indians 
have a curious art by which they change the colors of the feathers 
of many birds. They pluck out those which they wish to paint, 
and inoculate the fresh wound with the milky secretion from the 
skin of a small frog or toad. When the feathers grow again they 
are of a brilliant yellow or orange color, without any mixture of 
blue or green, as in the natural state of the bird; and on the new 
plumage being again plucked out it is said always to come of the 
same color, without any further operation. The feathers are 
renewed slowly, and it requires a great number of them to make a 
coronet (ARW, 202). Wallace’s observations are confirmed by 
