X 
ORNAMENTS FOR THE EARS AND LIPS 125 
Could I come near your beauty with my nails, 
I’d set my ten commandments in your face. 
This is a neat reference to the marks left by ten 
finger nails. 
The Kikuyu women when they “ fall out ” snatch at 
each other’s ear loops and endeavour to break them. 
A Kikuyu man with a plug of wood in the lobe 
of the ear. 
A surgeon, who practises in Nairobi informs me that 
on several occasions, he has succeeded in reuniting ear- 
loops broken in this way, and the natives have men 
among them who perform plastic surgery of this kind 
very successfully. 
As a result of the British occupation of the Protector- 
