In Sumatra, according to Marsden, young women, before they are of an age to be clothed, have a plate of silver in the shape of a heart hung in front by a chain of the same metal.[1160] Among the Garos of Bengal, the women wear merely a very short piece of striped blue cotton round the waist. The men have a very narrow waist-cloth tied behind and then brought up between the legs; the portion hanging over in front is sometimes adorned with brass boss-like ornaments, and white long-shaped beads.[1161] In Lukungu, the entire covering of most of the women consists of a narrow string with some white china beads threaded on it.[1162] The Hottentot women, according to Barrow, bestowed their largest and most splendid ornaments upon the little apron, about seven or eight inches wide, that hung from the waist. “Great pains,” he says, “seem to be taken by the women to attract notice towards this part of their persons. Large metal buttons, shells of the cypræa genus, with the apertures outwards, or anything that makes a great show, are fastened to the borders of this apron.”[1163] The Bushman women of South Africa, met with by the same traveller, had as their only covering a belt of springbok’s skin, the part which was intended to hang in front being cut into long threads. But the filaments, he says, “were so small and thin that they answered no sort of use as a covering; nor, indeed, did the females, either old or young, seem to feel any sense of shame in appearing before us naked.”[1164] And among the Negroes of Benin, according to Bosman, the girls had no other garment than some strings of coral twisted about the middle.[1165] It seems utterly improbable that such “garments” owe their origin to the feeling of shame. Their ornamental character being obvious, there can be but little doubt that men and women originally, at least in many cases, covered themselves not from modesty, but on the contrary, in order to make themselves more attractive—the men to women, and the women to men. In a state where all go perfectly nude, nakedness must appear quite natural, for what we see day after day makes no special impression upon us. But when one or another—whether man or woman—began to put on a bright-coloured fringe, some gaudy feathers, a string with beads, a bundle of leaves, a piece of cloth, or a dazzling shell, this could not of course escape the attention of the others; and the scanty covering was found to act as the most powerful attainable sexual stimulus.[1166] Hence the popularity of such garments in the savage world.