mities, and by operations of various
kinds producing pleasing dimples or other artificial signs of beauty.
We have seen an apparatus advertised to be worn on the nose during the
night for the purpose of correcting a disagreeable contour of this
organ. A medical description of the artificial manufacture of dimples
is as follows:--"The modus operandi was to make a puncture in the skin
where the dimple was required, which would not be noticed when healed,
and, with a very delicate instrument, remove a portion of the muscle.
Inflammation was then excited in the skin over the subcutaneous pit,
and in a few days the wound, if such it may be called, was healed, and
a charming dimple was the result." It is quite possible that some of
our modern operators have overstepped the bounds of necessity, and
performed unjustifiable plastic operations to satisfy the vanity of
their patients.

Dobrizhoffer says of the Abipones that boys of seven pierce their
little arms in imitation of their parents. Among some of the indigenous
Australians it is quite customary for ridged and linear scars to be
self-inflicted. In Tanna the people produce elevated scars on the arms
and chests. Bancroft recites that family-marks of this nature existed
among the Cuebas of Central America, refusal being tantamount to
rebellion. Schomburgk tells that among the Arawaks, after a Mariquawi
dance, so great is their zeal for honorable scars, the blood will run
down their swollen calves, and strips of skin and muscle hang from the
mangled limbs. Similar practices rendered it necessary for the United
States Government to stop some of the ceremonial dances of the Indians
under their surveillance.

A peculiar custom among savages is the amputation of a finger as a
sacrifice to a deity. In the tribe of the Dakotas the relatives of a
dead chief pacified his spirit by amputating a finger. In a similar
way, during his initiation, the young Mandan warrior, "holding up the
little finger of his left hand to the Great Spirit," ... "expresses his
willingness to give it as a sacrifice, and he lays it on the dried
buffalo skull, when another chops it off near the hand with a blow of
the hatchet." According to Mariner the natives of Tonga cut off a
portion of the little finger as a sacrifice to the gods for the
recovery of a superior sick relative. The Australians have a custom of
cutting off the last joint of the little finger of females as a token
of submission to powerful be