ORIENTAL IVORY CARVINGS 131 



sacrifice. Another interesting object, picked up in the pal- 

 ace enclosure, is an armlet or bracelet worn by one of the 

 women of the King of Benin. The ivory is excessively thin, 

 and the decoration executed with great care and skill. It 

 offers the representation of six heads, evidently of European 

 type, from the long, wavy hair. Another bracelet is deco- 

 rated with eighteen heads, nine of which appear to be Euro- 

 pean, while the remaining half are of a negroid cast of 

 features.* 



The collections of the Buffalo Society of Natural His- 

 tory embrace a number of most interesting ivory objects 

 presented to that institution by the West African Exhibi- 

 tion Company at the Pan-American Exposition. These 

 ivories are excellent specimens of the art of the native carv- 

 ers, some of whom have attained a high degree of profi- 

 ciency. 



In Loango, West Africa, the tusks are frequently decorated 

 with carvings representing processions, these "proces- 

 sional tusks" showing spiral columns of various figures of 

 men, children, goats, rhinoceroses, elephants, men carriers 

 with hammocks, basket carriers, etc. They are often sur- 

 mounted by figures of a monkey and a child. On some of 

 these tusks there are ten or eleven rows of procession, 

 beginning at the narrow end and winding downward to 

 the hollow and broader end of the tusk. Generally the 

 boundary of the spiral has a plain line of ivory as demarca- 

 tion; sometimes a ridge of the rough brown outer coating 

 of the tusk has been left for this purpose, or else the boun- 

 dary is marked by a line of stained ivory. The ivories of 

 this description owned by the Buffalo Society were carved 

 by Mabeala, a Loango native artist, in Buffalo, during the 

 summer of 1901. The outer *'bark" is usually entirely 



*Richard Quick, "Notes on Benin Carving," in the Reliquary, New Series, Vol. V, pp. 

 248-255; London, 1899. 



