﻿1/2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



and lines. These areas apparently represent wings, being decorated 

 with the same designs as the wings of an undoubted image of a bird 

 in the Smithsonian collection. 



It will be noted that by this identification the relative position of 

 the conoid projection to the body differs from that of this part in 

 other tripointed idols. It rises from the ventral, not the dorsal, 

 region of the animal represented. The base of the idol is the back 

 of the bird. Posterior appendages fail, as is commonly the case in 

 most of the tripointed stones with bird's heads. 



Some of the specimens 1 of the first type have heads with pro- 

 tuberant snouts like those of frogs and reptiles. Mason has sug- 

 gested that one of these may represent the head of an alligator, 2 but 

 it seems to me more likely that this particular idol was intended to 

 indicate an iguana. The suggestion of the same author that the 

 aborigines represented the head of a hog or peccary in another of 

 these stones (fig. 40) loses force when we recall the fact that neither 

 the hog nor the peccary belonged to the preeolumbian fauna of Haiti 

 or Porto Rico. 



The number of tripointed stones with human faces exceeds those 

 with bird or other animal heads, a fact which tells in support of the 

 anthropomorphous character of the majority of these idols. Like 

 those with animal heads, these human forms have two legs cut on 

 the posterior point, but none appears to have representations of ante- 

 rior appendages. 



Several specimens of the first type, with lizard heads, have anterior 

 legs cut on the sides of the conoid projection as well as the hind legs 

 on the posterior point. One of the best of these (plates xxin, 

 xxina), apparently representing a reptile, was found with two others 

 by Air. Zoller in a cane-field at El Carmen farm, near Salinas, Porto 

 Rico. The anterior legs are incised on the surface of the body, but the 

 posterior legs are cut in high relief and appear to be drawn to the 

 rum]). Both pairs of appendages have pits on the first joint, giving to 

 the posterior point the appearance of the eyes of a carved head. A 

 superficial view of this idol might lead one to suppose that it was 

 bicephalic, or that a head was carved on the posterior as well as on the 

 anterior point. A closer study of the specimen and a comparison with 

 others, however, show that the intention was to represent legs, not a 

 head, on the posterior projection ; what might be called eyes are pits 

 in tin- thighs for ornaments, the fancied nose is a short, stumpy tail, 

 and the mouth is simply a space between the toes. 



Mason, op. cit., fig. 40; also No. 17007. p. 383. 

 2 Ibid., fig. 44- 



