12 COMPRESSION OF THE SKULL- 



was addressed as Kesag-u, or Ta5mai, by her 

 (adopted) relatives, but as Gi(a)om by all others. 

 Children are usually suckled for about two years, 

 but are soon able, in a great measure, to procure 

 their own food, especially shell fish, and when strong- 

 enough to use the stick employed in digging- up 

 roots, they are supposed to be able to shift for 

 themselves. A peculiar form of head, which both 

 the Kowrarega and Gudang blacks consider as the 

 beau ideal of beauty, is produced by artificial com- 

 pression during infancy. Pressure is made by the 

 mother with her hands — as I have seen practised 

 on more than one occasion at Cape York — one being 

 applied to the forehead and the other to the occiput, 

 both of which are thereby flattened, while the skull 

 is rendered proportionally broader and longer than 

 it would naturally have been.* 



When the child is about a fortnight old the 

 perforation in the septum of the nose is made by 

 drilling it with a sharp pointed piece of tortoise- 

 shell, but the raised artificial scars, regarded as 

 personal ornaments by the Austrahans and Torres 

 Strait Islanders, are not made until long afterwards. 

 According to Gi'om, who states that among the 

 Kowraregas this scarification is purely voluntary, 

 the patient is laid upon the ground and held there, 

 while the incisions are made with a piece of glass 



* Precisely the same form of skull as that alluded to at p. 189, 

 vol. i. . hence it is not unreasonable to suppose that the latter might 

 have been artificially produced. 



