BOURKE.] HAIR POWDER. 535 
chi, of South America,! and by the tribes of the Isthmus of Darien.? 
This down has also been used by some of the Australians in their 
sacred dances.’ ‘The hair, or rather the wool upon their heads, was 
very abundantly powdered with white powder. . . . They powder 
not only their heads, but their beards too.” + 
In China ‘there is a widespread superstition that the feathers of birds, 
after undergoing certain incantations, are thrown up into the air, and 
being carried away by the wind work blight and destruction wherever 
they alight.” 
The down of birds seems not to have been unknown in Europe. To 
this day it is poured upon the heads of the bride and groom in wed- 
dings among the Russian peasantry. ° 
This leads up to the inquiry whether or not the application of tar 
and feathers to the person may not at an early period have been an 
act of religious significance, perverted into a ridiculous and infamous 
punishment by a conquering and unrelenting hostile sect. The sub- 
ject certainly seems to have awakened the curiosity of the learned 
Buckle, whose remarks may as well be given. 
Richard, during his stay in Normandy (1189), made some singular 
laws for regulating the conduct of the pilgrims in their passage by 
sea. “A robber, convicted of theft, shall be shaved in the manner 
of a champion; and boiling pitch poured upon his head, and the 
feathers of a pillow shaken over his head to distinguish him; and be 
landed at the first port where the ships shall stop.”° 
The circumstances mentioned in the text respecting tarring and 
feathering is a fine subject for comment by the searchers into popular 
antiquities. * 
HAIR POWDER. 
Speaking of the duvet” or down, with which many American savage 
tribes deck themselves, Picart observes very justly: ‘‘Cet ornement est 
bizare, mais dans le fond Vest il beaucoup plus que cette poudre dor 
dont les Anciens, se poudroient la téte, ou que cette poudre composée 
@amidon avec laquelle nos petits maitres modernes affectent de blan- 
chir leurs cheyeux ou leurs perruques?” ® 
Picart does not say, and perhaps it would not be wise for us to sur- 
mise, that these modes of powdering had a religious origin. 
The custom of powdering the hair seems to be a savage “ survival;” 
at least, it is still to be found among the Friendly Islanders, among 
' Peter Martyr, in Hakluyt’s Voyages, vol. 5, p. 460. 
* Bancroft, Nat. Races of the Pacific Slope, vol. 1, p. 750. 
$Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. 1, p. 73; vol. 2, p. 302. See also Carteret’s description of the 
natives of the Queen Charlotte Islands, visited by him in 1767. 
4+Hawkesworth, Voyages, vol. 1, p. 379. 
®Perry S. Heath, A Hoosier in Russia, New York, 1888, p- 114. 
® Fosbrooke, British Monachism, p. 442. 
7 See works cited in Buckle’s Common place Book, vol. 2, of *‘ Works,’> London, 1872, p. 47. 
§Picart, Cérémonies et Coaitumes Religieuses, vol. 6, p. 20. 
