top the leafy Olympus, in their daring efforts to scale the heavens, so modern Science has raised mountain on mountain high in her effort to rise to the eternal source of truth. She may not have sent Abaris around the earth on an arrow, but with lightning-like swiftness she sends our messages from ocean to ocean and from continent to continent. Her votaries may at times have seemed to some narrow-minded persons about to hang a Nessus shirt upon humanity, but, when the garment came to be received and understood, it was found to be not only destitute of the hydra venom, but filled with the greatest blessings for our race. Thus has Science wrought, opening up Hesperian gardens with their golden fruit, and, while scattering physical, intellectual, and moral benefits on every hand, has impressed upon man the grand truth that
"No pent-up Utica contracts his powers,
But the whole boundless continent is ours."
| DRESS AND ADORNMENT. |
I. DEFORMATIONS.
By Prof. FREDERICK STARR.
FOR our course of lectures in anthropology this year we have selected a single subject: Dress and Adornment This will be treated in four lectures upon the following topics: 1. Deformation. 2. Dress. 3. Ornament. 4. Religious dress. It is not claimed that the treatment is exhaustive; it is hoped, however, that it will be suggestive. Nor is it the lecturer's expectation that his audience will agree with him in all his views; he simply asks a fair consideration.
The question as to whether beauty is a something inherent in an object or a person, that appeals to a universal sentiment of mankind, is one that has been much debated. The metaphysician and the anthropologist are likely to answer the question differently. There is certainly no one ideal of personal beauty that appeals to all the world alike. The face most beautiful to us would be displeasing to a Hottentot. We may well look for a moment at some ethnic ideals of beauty. The negro admires blackness; Clapperton tells us that among certain Africans the white color of the skin, of which Europeans are so proud, excites only pity, astonishment, or terror; the Chinese dislike our noses, which they say are like the beaks of birds; the woman in Cochin-China sighs to be round like an apple; and the Hottentot women do not look with disfavor upon those enormous fatty outgrowths above the hips which to us appear frightful. So a
