THE ANTHROPOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY OF TORRES STRAITS. 591 
V. Notes on the Club Houses and Dubus of British New Guinea. 
By C. G. SELIGMANN, 
One or more houses larger and more highly decorated than the rest, called in 
the Gulf and Mekeo districts elamo and marea respectively, are to be seen in every 
village of these parts of British New Guinea. No women may enter these, they 
are the club houses of the men, the home of the unmarried youths, and strangers 
are quartered there. Each family or family group, called ztzubu in the Mekeo 
district, is responsible for the upkeep of one of these. Among the Toaripi much 
stress is laid on the convenience and advantage of an e/amo in keeping the young 
men from the women’s quarters, and their legend of the origin of the edamo relates 
how one of their ancestors, called Meuliave, was visited by Avara Laru, who rules 
the N.W. squalls, who bade him build a house for the unmarried youths into 
which no woman might come. Infringement of these rules is still met by Avara 
Laru destroying the elamo. Wooden effigies of birds and fishes are hung outside 
elamos, but these are not reverenced—the beast they represent is eaten when 
opportunities offer, and the family group is not called by their name. East of 
Delena elamos or mareas are not found, but their place is taken by the dubw, a 
platform, often two-storied, with elaborately carved corner posts and cross-pieces 
stretched longitudinally across the tops of these, which are hollowed to receive 
them. One man called Dubu Tauna, from each principal family of a family 
group (?duhz), looks after and is responsible for the dubu. The office is hereditary, 
not necessarily in the direct line. Women may not approach the dubu except on 
the Hood Peninsula, where once a year the girls who have become marriageable 
assemble on the dubu. The products of the garden and chase are sometimes hung 
on the dubu, which may rarely be painted red and white. Semon! notes that he 
has seen skulls hung on one, but does not state where. Before fighting, warriors 
fully decked and armed resort to the dubw and there mutter the names of their 
ancestors. After killing a man the successful warrior would, on his return to the 
village, go straight to the dubu, and on it eat his first meal. But little could be 
determined as to the meaning of the carving, the origin of the dubus themselves 
being unknown to the natives. At Qualimarupu there is a carefully excavated 
hollow in one of the corner posts, said to represent a bowl. The pattern, as a rule, 
is made up of a number of four-sided pyramids carved on the wood, and the tops 
of the corner posts are carved so as to resemble jaws, between which the cross- 
pieces rest. Perhaps these represent the jaws of a crocodile, the pyramids being 
conventionalised scales, This form of decoration is, however, found among inland 
people whose acquaintance with crocodiles must have been but slight. 
VI. Notes on Savage Music. By C. 8. Myers. 
As our modern orchestra admits the noises of drums and cymbals, and our 
harmony allows chords which in a more classical period were inadmissible, we, in 
our inquiry into past and primitive music, will not refuse to consider certain sounds 
as musical even though they be noisy. Sympathy should be our sole test of music. 
In savage life the songs of a tribe are itschief heritage. Certain songs recorded on 
the phonograph in Murray Island, Torres Straits, are now obsolete, and will pro- 
bably die out with the old men. Neither there nor in Borneo could any trace of the 
notes of birds be found in the music. Of the two fundamentally distinct elements 
in music, rhythm and melody, the one has its basis in bodily movement, the other in 
the emotional recitative. In Murray Island the drum is beaten to accentuate the 
words of the old songs, the music being singularly lacking in rhythm; among the 
North American Indians, on the other hand, rhythm is well developed. The ex- 
traordinary complexity of rhythm in certain Malay music was graphically recorded. 
1 Im australischen Busch, p. 353< 
