Note 159 — THE REASONS FOR WHICH OBJECTS ARE DECORATED. (continued 2)

In a letter Dr. Codrington writes: “I do not think that the very prognathous human head has anything to do with a bird. If you look at the very excellent coloured frontispiece to Brenchley’s Voyage of the Curaçoa, representing a canoe on a voyage, you will see that all the men are excessively prognathous. The original is in the Maidstone Museum. I have looked at my few Solomon Island things—a common bowl supported by two human figures, which are just the same. A carved bit of soft stone and the head of a betel lime stick, things just cut for amusement, have the same prognathism. In fact I believe that the ordinary representation of the human head is such, the more prognathous the better it is liked.”