40 " TRANSACTIONS OF THE [nOV. 17, 



similar impulse has driven the Bushman to cover the walls of 

 his caves in South Africa with jnctnres whose boldness and 

 fidelity are the amazement of all who see them. 



We have, then, in the French cave-dwellers a people who had 

 a well-defined art, and who, as art workers, were isolated and 

 unlike all neighbors. An eminent English scientist believes that 

 neither they nor their art are gone. There is a people who to-day 

 lives much as the cave-man of France lived so long ago, who 

 hunts and fishes as he did, who dresses as he did, who builds 

 liouses in whose architecture some think they can see evidence 

 of a cavern original, who above all still carves batons from ivory, 

 and implements from bone, adorning them with skilfully cut 

 figures of animals and scenes from the chase. This people is 

 the Eskimo. If Dawkins' view is true, we have in the Eskimo 

 carvings of to-day a true ethnic survival — an outcropping of the 

 same passion which displayed itself in the mammoth carving of 

 La Madelaine. 



Scarcely anything in the range of American antiquities has 

 caused more wonder and led to more discussion than the Animal 

 Mounds of Wisconsin. We do not pretend to explain their pur- 

 pose. Perhaps they were village guardians; perhaps tribal totems 

 marking territorial limits; some may have been of use as game 

 drives; some may even have served as fetich helpers in the hunt, 

 like the prey gods of Zuiii. We may never know their full 

 meaning. It is sufficient here for me to remind you what they 

 are and where. They are nearly confined to a belt of moderate 

 width, stretching through Wisconsin and overlapping into Min- 

 nesota and Iowa. Within this area they occur by hundreds. Dr. 

 Lapham published a great work on the Effigy Mounds in 1855, 

 in which he gave the results of many accurate surveys and de- 

 scribed many interesting localities. Since his time no one has 

 paid so much attention to the effigies as Stephen D. Peet, editor, 

 of the American Antiquarian, whose articles have during this 

 year been presented in book form. Mr. Peet has paid much at- 

 tention to the kind of animals represented, and has, it seems to 

 us, more nearly solved the question than any one else. He rec- 

 ognizes four classes of animals — land animals or quadruped 

 mammals, alwajs shown in profile; amphibians, always shown as 

 sprawling, with all four feet represented; birds, recognized by 

 their wings; and fishes, characterized by the absence of limbs of 

 any kind. The land animals are subdivided into horned graz- 

 ers and fur bearers. Of the many species he claims to find, it 

 seems to us the most sa*:isfactorily identified are the buffalo, 

 moose, deer, or elk; the panther, bear, fox, wolf, and squirrel; the 



