The fashion, prevalent among many peoples, of transforming parts of the body, affords a good illustration of their ideas about personal beauty. The Indians of North America, who have a low and flat forehead, often exaggerate this natural peculiarity by an artificial flattening of the forehead.[1563] In Tahiti, Samoa, and other islands of the Pacific Ocean, it has been customary from time immemorial to flatten the occiputs and to press the noses of the infants, as Professor Gerland observes, in order to increase a national characteristic which is considered beautiful.[1564] The same practice occurs in Sumatra, and Marsden could learn no other reason for it, but that it was an improvement of beauty in the estimation of the natives.[1565] Among the Ovambo of South Africa, the fashion is quite different:—“With the exception of the crown, which is always left untouched,” says Andersson, “the men often shave the head, which has the effect of magnifying the natural prominence of the hinder parts of it.”[1566] Among the Chinese, small feet are considered a woman’s chief attraction; hence the feet of girls are pressed from early childhood. Now we know from the measurements made by Scherzer and Schwarz, that Chinese women have by nature unusually small feet—a peculiarity which has always distinguished them from their Tartar neighbours. And, as a matter of fact, the Manchu Tartars, who at present rule the Chinese Empire, never press the feet of their daughters.[1567] Each race considers its own colour preferable to every other. The North American Indians admire “a tawny hide,” and the Chinese dislike the white skin of the Europeans.[1568] Some young New Zealanders, who themselves were lightly copper-coloured, were greatly amused at the dark tint of an Australian, and laughed at him for being so ugly.[1569] Barrington tells us on the other hand, of an Australian woman, who, having had a child by a white man, smoked it and rubbed it with oil to give it a darker colour.[1570] The Hovas, who are probably, as a rule, the lightest people in Madagascar, often put a spot of dark colour on the cheeks, in order to heighten the effect of their fair complexion, of which they are very proud.[1571] Among the Malays, according to Mr. Crawfurd, “the standard of perfection in colour is virgin gold, and, as a European lover compares the bosom of his mistress to the whiteness of snow, the East Insular lover compares that of his to the yellowness of the precious metal.”[1572]