he grave is opened and the lower jaw removed
from the corpse and preserved. This removal of the jaw is the occasion
of solemnities and ceremonial washings, in which the whole male
population of the village takes part. But as to the meaning of these
ceremonies, and as to what is done with the jawbone, we have no exact
information.[389] According to the Russian traveller, Baron N. von
Miklucho-Maclay, who has also given us an account of the Papuans of
Astrolabe Bay,[390] though not apparently of the villages described by
Dr. Hagen, the whole skull is dug up and separated from the corpse after
the lapse of about a year, but only the lower jawbone is carefully kept
by the nearest kinsman as a memorial of the deceased. Baron
Miklucho-Maclay had great difficulty in inducing a native to part with
one of these memorials of a dead relation.[391] In any case the
preservation of this portion of the deceased may be supposed to have for
its object the maintenance of friendly relations between the living and
the dead. Similarly in Uganda the jawbone is the only part of the body
of a deceased king which, along with his navel-string, is carefully
preserved in his temple-tomb and consulted oracularly.[392] We may
conjecture that the reason for preserving this part of the human frame
rather than any other is that the jawbone is an organ of speech, and
that therefore it appears to the primitive mind well fitted to maintain
intercourse with the dead man's spirit and to obtain oracular
communications from him.

[Sidenote: Sham fight as a funeral ceremony at Astrolabe Bay.]

The Russian traveller, Baron Miklucho-Maclay, has described a curious
funeral ceremony which is observed by some of the Papuans of Astrolabe
Bay. I will give the first part of his description in his own words,
which I translate from the German. He says: "The death of a man is
announced to the neighbouring villages by a definite series of beats on
the drum. On the same day or the next morning the whole male population
assembles in the vicinity of the village of the deceased. All the men
are in full warlike array. To the beat of drum the guests march into the
village, where a crowd of men, also armed for war, await the new-comers
beside the dead man's hut. After a short parley the men divide into two
opposite camps, and thereupon a sham fight takes place. However, the
combatants go to work very gingerly and make no use of their spears. But
dozens of arrows are continually