"The same custom exists among the New Zealanders, who also have an apparatus upon which they rest their necks, in order, when asleep, to save their _coiffures_. They wear an enormous chignon, two feet high and ornamented with ribbons, of which they are very proud. The only difference between this chignon and certain others which I need not mention is, that the former cannot be removed at will. This object, thus adorned, rests, during the sleep of its owner, on a sort of framework.
"The Chinese and Japanese sleep, in the same way, on a bedstead bevelled off at the head; and in the Egyptian hieroglyphical drawings we find instruments evidently meant for the same use.
"It is very probable that during the bronze epoch great attention was devoted to the hair, and this is the more probable as in every tomb belonging to this period we find pins from 2 feet to 2-1/2 feet in length, furnished with large knobs, and of the same shape as the pins used by the Abyssinian soldiers; and also, because during the Stone Age, as well as the Bronze Age, a kind of comb is found which is similar to that which is now used by the New Zealanders to scratch, rather than to comb, their heads. The heads of the pins are often very richly ornamented; they are of the most varied shapes, and are extremely common both in the tombs and also in the lacustrine dwellings.
"We have the less right to be astonished at our ancestors sleeping with their heads resting on such a machine as we have just described, knowing, as we do, that the hussars of Frederick the Great used to spend the whole night in arranging their _coiffures_!"
Thus, while Dr. Keller and many other archæologists ascribe the _crescents_ found in the Swiss lakes to some kind of religious worship, M. Vogt, whose idea is of a much more prosaic character, does not attribute them to any other worship but that of _self_ as represented by the hair! The reader can take his choice between these two explanations. We shall only remark, in corroboration of Dr. Keller's opinion, that certain Gallic tribes used for a religious symbol this very crescent which M. Vogt would make out to be a pillow--a stone pillow which, as it seems to us, must have been very hard, even for primitive man.