908 REPORT — 1900. 



retaliation only. No Kenyah will kill a dog, and the dead body of a dog is re- 

 garded with fear. 



Kenyahs will not eat the flesh of deer or horned cattle, and there are many 

 restrictions on touching or using any parts of them. 



Only old or renowned warriors will wear or touch the skin of a tiger. 



One house is decorated with carvings of the gibbon on every large beam, and 

 all Kenyahs have a dread of the Maias and the long-nosed monkey. 



There thus seems to be every degree of regard paid to the different beasts, 

 from the mere uneasy feeling in the presence of the uncanny long-nosed monkey 

 to the elaborate cult of the hawk, and the nature of the respect paid to any species 

 seems in nearly every case to be the direct expression of the impression made on 

 the barbarian's mind by the behaviour of the beasts. 



The Spirit-Helper.— EiNBvy Sea-Dayak hopes to be guided and helped all 

 through his life by a spirit which announces itself to him in dreams and takes up 

 its abode in some peculiar natural object or in some animal. In the latter case 

 the Dayak will never kill or eat one of the same species of animal, and will lay 

 the same prohibition on all his descendants, so that a whole family may come to 

 pay especial regard to one species of animal for many generations. A similar 

 institution occurs, though less commonly, among the other tribes. In such cases 

 we seem to be able to trace sometimes the actual origin and growth of a totem. 



3, Report on the Etlinograpliy of tlie Malay Peninsula. 

 See Reports, p. 393. 



4. On the Present State of our Knowledge of the Modern Population of 

 Egypt. By D. Randall MacIver, M.A. 



5. Perforate Humeri in Ancient Egyptian Skeletons, 

 By Professor A. Macalister, F.R.S. 



In sorting out our Cambridge collection of Egyptian bones I have noted the 

 frequency of supra-articular perforation of the humerus, especially in the bones 

 from Libyan graves. I did not begin to count the number of examples until more 

 than three-fourths of the series had been put away in store-cases, but out of the 

 last twenty boxes opened I found that out of 682 humeri 390 were perforate and 

 292 imperforate. The percentage of perforation is therefore 57'2. 



This exceeds anything hitherto published. Of ancient North Americans the 

 percentage of perforate bones out of 300 specimens is 40 per cent. In one collection 

 from the Gila Valley, in Arizona, 48 perforate bones were found out of 89, a per- 

 centage of 53-9 ; but this is exceptionally high, and the number of bones is not 

 large. In our Cambridge collection when I began to count I found out of the 

 first 115 bones that 65 were perforated ; so, had I none but this series, the percent- 

 age would have come out 565. 



The Libyans may therefore, I think, claim to hold the record. In our dissect- 

 ing-room there were three instances out of the last hundred bodies examined. 

 Other statistics will be found in Messrs. Matthews and Lamb's article on the 

 subject.* 



The authors just quoted are most probably correct in considering this as an 

 acquired character. The youngest specimen obtained was in a humerus of a child 

 probably six years old. I have not seen any genuine approach to this condition 

 among 100 foetal humeri examined for the purpose. As far as I know, it has never 

 been found in a foetal bone. 



It is a perforation of the shaft well above the epiphysial junction line. The 



• Mevi, Amer. National 4cad, Sci-, vi, 217, 



