TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 849 



3. The Survival of Corporal Penance. By Osbert H. Howaeth. 



The author exhibited specimens of the ' disciplinas ' or scourges, the use of which, 

 by way of public penance, still survives in the village of Fenaes d'Ajuda, a remote 

 community on the north coast of St. Michael's, Azores. It is presumably a practice 

 which has been continued in this place without interruption since the first coloni- 

 sation of the islands by the Portuguese in the Middle Ages, and is still exercised 

 with such extreme severity as occasionally to result in death. The features of the 

 belief associated with self-flagellation are peculiar to the place, and to some extent 

 inconsistent with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church in modern times. 

 They therefore constitute another evidence that, whereas the public exhibition of 

 this penance was repeatedly suppressed in Europe, even during early times, it has 

 escaped attention and been perpetuated in this one instance up to the present 

 year, when, in consequence of the attention recently drawn to it, steps have been 

 taken by the local authority to ensure its extinction. 



4. Notes on Chest-types. By Dr. G. W. Hambleton. 



The observations of another year have completely confirmed the research laid 

 before the Section at the Manchester meeting. It has been found very easy to 

 obtain the best type of chest in young people. But anthropologists will be sur- 

 prised to learn that the type of chest can, with care, be changed in the same 

 direction in mature age. This the author has seen in the case of a diseased chest in a 

 gentleman aged 37. Between the ages of 25 and 33 he has frequently obtained 

 similar results. Here then are facts showing the direct power of the surround- 

 ings in making types. 



6. Third Report of the Committee for investigating the Prehistoric Race in 

 the Greek Islands. — See Reports, p. 99, 



6. Fourth Report of the Cornmittee for investigating and publishing reports 

 on the physical characters, languages, and industrial and social con- 

 dition of the North-Western Tribes of the Dominion of Canada. — See 

 Reports, p. 233. 



MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. Nechlaces in relation to Prehistoric Commerce. 

 By Miss A. W. Buckland. 



The object of this paper is to trace the geographical distribution of various forms 

 of necklaces and beads, as indicating some sort of commercial intercourse between 

 the races among whom they are found either in present use, or among the relics of 

 the past. 



Among the ancient cave-dwellers of Europe, teeth of men and animals, bored 

 for suspension and intermixed with shells and pieces of bone, were used as necklaces, 

 and similar necklaces are still worn by savages in almost all parts of the world ; but 

 in the Andaman Islands necklaces are made of pieces of human bone, and of bones 

 of animals, not bored, but bound to cords, and wood is sometimes made to imitate 

 bone. The same singular substitution exists in the Admiralty Islands, where also 

 human bones are used as neck ornaments. Necklaces formed of discs of white, 

 purple, and red shell, cut with much care and labour from large sea-shells, are used 

 by natives all over America and across the various groups of the Pacific to Japan, 



1888. 3 I 



