282 JOSHUA RUTLAND, ESQ., ON 
continent. From the institutions and customs of the 
Mexicans and Peruvians many have argued that they must 
have been offshoots from some Asiatic people, but it is quite 
evident that there was no direct intercourse within historic 
times between the New World and any of the ancient 
centres of Asiatic civilization, Had Peru or Mexico been 
colonized from any of these centres, the pastoral industry, 
the cultivated Old World esculents, the art of manufacturing 
iron, the potter’s wheel, writing, etc., could not have been 
wholly unknown on the American continent. The Mexicans 
and Peruvians, having bronze implements and ornaments of 
gold and silver when conquered by the Spaniards, were 
higher in the scale of civilization than the natives of 
Polynesia, who were dependent on stone, shell, and wood, but 
probably they had not been very long superior, as the 
ruined structures found in many of the islands could not 
have been erected without metal tools. 
The human figures on the colossal statues of Easter 
Island, though well featured, have enormous pendent ears. 
According to native tradition the monuments found in this 
small isolated island were erected by a people called “ The 
Big Ears.” 
The small stone images recently discovered on Necker 
Island, over 3,000 miles distant, having also disproportion- 
ately large ears, an artificial enlargement of this organ must 
have been a mark of distinction amongst the inhabitants of 
Oceania in remote times. The following passage from 
Robert Drury’s Journal describing some persons he met in 
Madagascar shows that the custom was preserved there at 
the commencement of the last century:—“I asked them 
where their country lay. They said it was a mountainous 
inland place divided into two kingdoms, called Amboerlambo, 
and governed by two brothers—they had vast large ears 
with bright silver plates in them glittering like comets. I 
was very curious to know how they became so, and they told 
me. When they are young a small hole is made and a 
piece of lead put in it at first. After the wound is healed 
they have a small spring-rmg put in which dilates it by 
degrees, and after this another till the hole is large enough ; 
then they place in it these silver plates, which are neatly 
made and exactly adjusted to the hole with great care for 
fear of breaking it. Some of these holes in their ears are 
large enough for a woman’s hand to go through. They 
have artificers among themselves who make these ornaments. 
