construction.  Their hair is variously adorned with flowers, and perfumed with oil of benjamin.  Civet is also in repute, but more used by the men.  To render their skin fine, smooth, and soft they make use of a white cosmetic called poopoor [a mixture of ginger, patch-leaf, maize, sandal-wood, fairy-cotton, and mush-seed with a basis of fine rice].” (W.  Marsden, History of Sumatra, 1783, p. 230.)

The Alfurus of Seram in the Moluccas, who have not yet been spoilt by foreign influences, are very fond of music and dancing.  Their maku dances, which take place at night, have been described by Joest:  “Great torches of dry bamboos and piles of burning resinous leaves light up the giant trees to their very summits and reveal in the distance the little huts which the Alfuras have built in the virgin forests, as well as the skulls of the slain.  The women squat together by the fire, making a deafening noise with the gongs and the drums, while the young girls, richly adorned with pearls and fragrant flowers, await the beginning of the dance.  Then appear the men and youths without weapons, but in full war-costume, the girdle freshly marked with the number of slain enemies. [Among the Alfuras it is the man who has the largest number of heads to show who has most chance of winning the object of his love.] They hold each other’s arms and form a circle, which is not, however, completely closed.  A song is started, and with small, slow steps this ring of bodies, like a winding snake, moves sideways, backward, closes, opens again, the steps become heavier, the songs and drums louder, the girls enter the circle and with closed eyes grasp the girdle of their chosen youths, who clasp them by the hips and necks, the chain becomes longer and longer, the dance and song more ardent, until the dancers grow tired and disappear in the gloom of the forest.”  (W.  Joest, Welt-Fahrten, 1895, Bd. ii, p. 159.)

The women of the New Hebrides dance, or rather sway, to and fro in the midst of a circle formed by the men, with whom they do not directly mingle.  They leap, show their genital parts to the men, and imitate the movements of coitus.  Meanwhile the men unfasten the manou (penis-wrap) from their girdles with one hand, with the other imitating the action of seizing a woman, and, excited by the women, also go through a mock copulation.  Sometimes, it is said, the dancers masturbate.  This takes place amid plaintive songs, interrupted from time to time by loud cries and howls. (Untrodden Fields of Anthropology, by a French army-surgeon, 1898, vol. ii, p. 341.)

Among the hill tribes of the Central Indian Hills may be traced a desire to secure communion with the spirit of fertility embodied in vegetation.  This appears, for instance, in a tree-dance, which is carried out on a date associated not only with the growths of the crops or with harvest, but also with the seasonal period for marriage