proceedings: anthropological society 171 



that which we now know as the culture of living descendants, is the 

 product of acculturation, due to cultural contacts in this expansion. 

 History can afford, therefore, only an imperfect picture. We must 

 rely on archeology, mainly architectural, and ceramic remains, sup- 

 plemented by ethnology, to discover the nature of the culture of these 

 two original nuclei. 



In a discussion of their distribution the speaker showed numerous 

 illustrations of the prehistoric kivas, called towers, situtated in Hill 

 Canyon, near Ouray, Utah. To these he gave the name, suggested 

 by their site, Mushroom Rock ruins. Their more striking peculiarity 

 is their position on the tops of inverted cones, or mushroom-like 

 formations of rock, produced by the enormous erosion evident in the 

 region where they occur. He said that this form of ruins was not 

 morphologically a different type from towers, but their site was so un- 

 usual that it was convenient to designate them by this name. 



While the important question of the antiquity of the cliff dwellings 

 has not been satisfactorily answered by the observation made at Far 

 View House, progress is being made in the accumulation of significant 

 data bearing upon it. As long as this question remains unanswered 

 the archeologist has plenty of research before him for many more 

 years of field work in the Southwest. 



The communication was illustrated with lantern slides. 



The 507th meeting of the Society was held in room 44 of the New 

 National Museum, February 20 at 4 p.m. The speaker of the after- 

 noon was Dr. I. M. Casanowicz of the New National Museum, who pre- 

 sented a paper on The fish in cult, myth, and symbol. 



Dr. Casanowicz said, "The fish, as the inhabitant of the mysterious, 

 indestructible, never-resting water, early impressed man deeply, and 

 was considered by him as the genius and representative of the life- 

 producing element. Traces of the veneration of the fish, sometimes 

 revealed in taboos, are found everywhere in ancient times and still 

 exist in various parts of the world." An important center of ichthy- 

 olatry in antiquity, according to the testimony of classical writers, 

 was Syria where a fish goddess under the name of Derketo-Atargatios 

 was worshiped as a phase of the great Semitic mother goddess Astarte, 

 being regarded as a personification of the fructifying power of the 

 water. Reminiscences of this cult still survive in the cherishing of 

 sacred inviolate fishes in some places near mosques. 



Tales of the fish as a medium of transformation and incarnation of 

 spirits and ghosts are met with among various nations, and in later 

 times the fish seems to have been, next to the bird, a symbol of the 

 departed human soul. The fish as carrier of man across the water 

 was illustrated by the story of Arion and the dolphin as told by Her- 

 odotus, and by the Biblical narrative contained in the book of Jonah. 

 Parallel narratives of a man being swallowed by a sea monster were quot- 

 ed from Greek, Polynesian, and Cherokee lore. 



The belief in the magical and apotropaic properties of the fish was 



