psychological problem difficult to solve. Whether it be owing to
perversion of the sexual instinct, which is not unlikely, or to other
cause, it is not proposed to discuss. Be that as it may, the prevalence
of the habit among the Eskimo is confined to the female sex, who are
tattooed on arriving at the age of puberty. The women of Saint Lawrence
island, in addition to lines on the nose, forehead and chin, have
uniformly a figure of strange design on the cheeks, which is suggestive
of cabalistic import. It could not be ascertained, however, whether such
is the case. The lines drawn on the chin were exactly like the ones I
have seen on Moorish women in Morocco. Another outlandish attempt at
adornment was witnessed at Cape Blossom in a woman who wore a bunch of
colored beads suspended from the septum of her nose. These habits,
however, hardly seem so revolting as the use of the labret by the
"Mazinka" men on the American coast, of whom it is related that a sailor
seeing one of them for the first time, and observing the slit in the
lower lip through which the native thrust his tongue, thought he had
discovered a man with two mouths. The use of the labret, like many of
the attempts at primitive ornamentation, is very old, its use having
been traced by Dall along the American coast from the lower part of
Chili to Alaska. Persons fond of tracing, vestiges of savage
ornamentation amid intellectual advancement and æsthetic sensibility far
in advance of the primitive man, may observe in the wearers of bangles
and earrings the same tendency existing in a differentiated form.


DIVERSIONS.

I doubt whether Shakespeare's dictum in regard to music holds good when
applied to the Eskimo, for they have but little music in their souls,
and among no people is there such a noticeable absence of "treason,