FASCICULI MALAY EASES 
1 1 
in all but a very few cases, in which it was vestigial. The face was broad, 
mesoprosopic, and pointed towards the chin. The features were infantile. 
The colour of the skin of the body was never darker than chocolate, usually 
between chocolate and dark olive. That of the face was rather darker, partly 
owing to exposure, and partly to dirt. With a few exceptions, the eyes were 
reddish brown. The soles and palms were nearly white. The space between 
the hallux and the second digit was different in different individuals. 
The hair of the head, even in young children, had invariably been shaved, 
but in the great majority of individuals a lock upon the top of the head had 
been allowed to grow to what was said to be its full length — not more than 
five or six inches. In some this was absent, and then the hair covered the 
scalp in close ‘ peppercorn ’ curls, which developed into frizzly ringlets when 
permitted to grow. I have no doubt that they might have been combed out 
to form an aureole, or ‘ mop,’ though not one of the large dimensions 
occasionally seen among the Mai Darat. In a half-breed Seman boy, who had 
been brought up as a Malay, a lock had been left in the same place, as is 
generally done in the case of Malay boys who have not yet been circumcised ; 
but the character of the hair was quite different, for it was much coarser and 
less stiff, and hung down his back in a long, wavy coil to the length of about 
a foot-and-a-half. 
The great majority of the men suffered from a skin disease similar to that 
noted in the case of the Hami ; the women appeared to be far less liable to 
it. Like the Hami, also, the Seman are very sensitive to wet and to the direct 
rays of the sun, and extremely afraid of ‘ hot rain,’ which they regard as the 
cause of ague, to which they say that they are liable. Several of the men 
complained of ‘worms in the teeth,’ i.e., dental caries; and for this reason 
one had even made a mortar in which to grind up all his food. In a camp 
near Grit I saw one man who was imbecile and epileptic. His body and limbs 
were frightfully scarred by burns caused by his falling into the fire. 
The clothing of the Seman men resembles that of the Hami, except that 
it is often made of bark-cloth, derived from a species of Artocarpus , and that 
the strip of which it is composed is of the same width throughout its 
length. The women usually wear a short petticoat of cotton or bark-cloth 
when in the neighbourhood of Malay villages, but dress like the men when 
in the jungle. They wear girdles made of the rhizomorph of the same fungus 
as that used by the Hami women ; but, though the effect is the same, they 
make them in rather a different way, using no string foundation, but plaiting the 
rhizomorph itself into long bands about four mm. wide, from which the loose 
ends hang down and form a fringe about six inches deep. The bands are 
