In game hunting the aborigines use either the old guns, obtained from the Chinese by barter, long ago, or--in the cases where these guns have been confiscated by the Japanese on the ground of their owners being “dangerous savages”--they have returned to the use of bows and arrows such as were used by their ancestors before guns were introduced among them. The bow is simple, usually made of wood of the catalpa tree, the bow-string being made of the tough “China grass,” which grows on the island. The arrow is made of bamboo, the arrow-head now being of iron, this being pounded out from any piece of scrap-iron which the tribes-people can obtain by barter. An interesting feature of Formosan archery is that the arrows are not feathered, as Japanese arrows are; also that in shooting the arrow, this is always placed on the left side of the bow, whereas it is placed on the right side by both Chinese and Japanese. So much for the rather unpleasant subject of head-hunting, and those customs which are associated with, or have sprung from, it. [Illustration: TWO PAIWAN MEN AND A YOUNG WOMAN IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE OF A PAIWAN CHIEF.] Turning now to the subject of the general political and social organization of the tribes, taken collectively, perhaps the most striking feature may be summed up in the remark of the Japanese policeman who escorted me on one of my first trips among the Taiyal: “Their head-man is a woman”--which rather “Irish” remark holds true not only as regards the Taiyal, but as regards other tribes as well. One often sees the queen, or woman-chief, of a tribal group borne on the shoulders of her subjects, as she goes about the village, so that her sacred feet may not touch the ground. So closely, however, are “Church and State” bound together--that is, so frequently are queen and chief-priestess one--that descriptions of certain customs connected with the “woman head-man” must be postponed until later, when these will be dealt with under the respective heads of RELIGION and MARRIAGE.