MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 
it tied up, while others have it short and curly, 
looking almost as if it had been cropped and lying 
close to the scalp. What we may call the ‘ cropped” 
hair required little dressing, but to keep the mop 
hair in order they use a comb like a wide fork with 
five prongs and a fairly longish handle. With this 
implement they comb out their hair elaborately. 
For ceremonial dances, and on festal occasions, 
they wear a wonderful head-dress made of cockatoo 
feathers, which looks, when it is assumed, like an 
enormous flat horseshoe, passing over the top of the 
head and slightly in front of the ears. It conceals 
the ears entirely when the observer looks the wearer 
full in the face. 
The most cherished ornament, however, is the 
necklace of dogs’ teeth, which is prized by the 
Papuans beyond any article of “trade” that the 
traveller can give them. Not even a knife or an 
axe 18 so welcome, nor can the traveller get so 
much work out of the Papuan for any steel imple- 
ment as he can for one or two teeth. I knew of a 
case where a missionary, not with any fraudulent 
intention, but merely from a desire to test Papuan 
intelligence, manufactured imitation dogs teeth very 
cunningly out of bone, and offered them to a native. 
The man, however, had too keen an eye to be done ; 
he weighed the teeth critically in his hand for a 
moment, and then handed them back with a scornful 
‘““No good.” 
A further adjunct of their very simple costume 
is the armlet, which is knitted from grass fibre with 
a pointed cassowary bone. This primitive needle 
295 
