40 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Nov. 17, 
similar impulse has driven the Bushman to cover the walls of 
his caves in South Africa with pictures 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 
houses 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. Wedo 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 Zufii. 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 Jowa. 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, always 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 satisfactorily identified are the buffalo, 
moose, deer, orelk; the panther, bear, fox, wolf, and squirrel; the 
