I have never been worried with the wish or ambition to be a head hunter in the Dyak sense, but on this one occasion I did wish that it had been possible, without violating any law, or doing anything to a fellow-creature which I should not like done to myself, to have obtained possession of this man’s head, with its set of unique and terrible teeth…

When I coveted possession of that head it was not because I thought that it might lead to any fresh discovery. A lower motive inspired the feeling. I wished for it only that I might bring it over the sea, to drop it like a new apple of discord… inscribed, of course, “to the most learned”, but giving no locality and no particulars.

W H Hudson, The Naturalist In La Plata (1892)