pali.) LABRET1FERY. 79 



This is a particularly significant fact, taken into consideration with the 

 geographical distribution of the labret custom, and could it be ascer- 

 tained that the latter was in the early historic or prehistoric period in 

 vogue among any of the South Sea people, such a discovery would be 

 of the highest interest. 



The nearest approximation to it, actually in use amoug living abo 

 rigines of Melanesia, is described in the reports of various voyagers 

 on the practice of piercing the nasal alae, and inserting the teeth 

 of a pig or some other animal. These will be again referred to. But 

 in Schmeltz's annotated catalogue of the ethnological treasures of the 

 Museum Godeffroy at Hamburg, I find that certain masks from New 

 Ireland show, in one, an S-shaped flat piece of wood inserted, labret- wise, 

 between the mouth and the nose ; in two others wooden representations 

 of boar tusks, one on each side, curving upward, with between them 

 a flat perforated wooden carving ending anteriorly in an arrow-shaped 

 point similarly placed between the mouth and the nose like lateral and 

 median labrets; in another there is ouly the median piece; and in still 

 another there is a tusk only on one side of the upper lip (1. c, p. 23). 



Rings are said to be worn in the lower lip as well as in the nasal alse 

 by girls in some parts of India, but I have not discovered any evidence 

 of this practice in the island peoples of Polynesia. 



The geographical distribution of the custom, though interesting, had 

 little significance as long as it was apparently sporadic and, between 

 the regions where it was known to exist, no line of contact could be 

 traced over the vast intervening areas where it was not known. It 

 is but recently, partly from old documents read in the light of pres- 

 ently discovered facts, and partly from the results of recent explora- 

 tion and collections, that these gaps appear to be very materially dimin- 

 ished, though not wholly bridged. While the reserve imperative upon 

 serious students, iu view of the vast flood of inconsequent theorizing 

 in ethnological literature, deters one from claiming more than a chain 

 of suggestive facts for which a tentative hypothetical explanation is 

 submitted for criticism, it would seem as if the chain was of sufficient 

 strength and significance to warrant serious consideration and renewed 

 investigation. 



Taken in connection with what may fairly be called the remarkable 

 coincidences of form and fashion between some of the masks hereafter 

 to be described from the Indo-facific and from the Northwest Ameri- 

 can region, manifest is the importance of tracing the labret custom, as 

 begins to seem possible, independent of tribe, language, or race along 

 nearly the whole western line of the Americas, with its easterly over- 

 flows, especially iu the middle and South American region, and its 

 equally remarkable westerly restriction further north. 



Before proceeding to indicate the facts of distribution, it is necessary 

 to consider the nature of the custom and its limitations. 



So far as known at present, labretifery is a particularly human and 



