make them long, broad, or flat, as it chances to think best. Some tribes consider it vulgar to have white even teeth like those of a dog, so they file them down, colour them, and subject them to various other kinds of treatment, with a view to fitting them for their dignified position in the mouth of a man. Other nations, with much pain, tattoo themselves in elegant patterns, raise knobs of flesh on their faces, and stick large bones and shells through the lobes of their ears and the cartilages of their noses. It is not so-very long since all Europe considered it impossible for children to grow straight without being swaddled. How could Nature be expected to do her work unaided ?
From the earliest records of man, and to the present day, his efforts can be traced to improve upon the form which Nature has given him, until sometimes all semblance to the original design has been lost, and the "human form divine" has become the human form artificial. At the present time, among Europeans, this tendency is chiefly shown by both sexes in regard to the feet, of which more anon, and by women in regard to their waists. The custom of deforming the waist is, however, confined neither to Europe nor to modern times.
By various statues and bas-reliefs in the British Museum, I am led to believe that compression of the waist was a very ancient custom. Many of the figures, coming from widely different parts of the world and of very remote date, although nude, have waists which are perfectly round, instead of being elliptical, as is the natural waist, and which are so small in proportion to the other parts of the figure
