Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/766

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746
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nary dances the masks are "excellent representations of the Aleutian type of face." In the New Hebrides group of islands, "masks are used in dances which the women are prohibited from

Fig. 6.—Agricultural Dance.

seeing."[1] Now, just as with the bull-roarer, so it is with masks used in secret dances—the women are forbidden to see them.

We now pass to dances of people in the agricultural stage. They are performed for rain, for the fertility of the land, for bountiful harvests, and in honor of the deities that preside over


  1. Third Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 141.