54 BULLETIN OF THE LIVERPOOL MUSEUMS. 
If it be a fan the lady holds in her right hand, it is not of the more usual 
Benin shape, of a large circle of ox-hide, such as Burton tells us he saw 
everywhere in Benin, in 1862, and as Commander Bacon also noted at the 
recent capture of the city. 
This figure, it will be observed, is in the rough state in which it left the 
founder’s hands, untouched by the finishing chisel of the artist. 
IV. In Fig. 5, and Fig. 6, are presented front and side views of one of the 
most interesting of our acquisitions—a solid statuette, representing a native 
soldier, or hunter, standing, with a flint-lock in his hand, on a square octapod 
pedestal—the piece being, in total height, 520 mm. He is clothed as to the 
upper part of his body, in a garment ingeniously formed out of the two 
halves of a headless leopard’s hide—the flat skin having been divided with a 
pair of legs to each section. The front part of the hide hangs down over the 
chest, with the front legs thrown over the shoulders, strap-wise, to be joined 
to the top-side of the hind half of the skin, which hangs with the tail (to 
the tip of which is attached a bell), reaching down the back to the girdle ; 
the hind legs are carried under the arms as straps to meet over the chest, 
where they are clasped together by a buckle, formed of three rows of short- 
linked chains. Round his loins, supported by a girdle, is a short pleated kilt- 
like garment, reaching to the middle of the thighs, underneath which a pair 
of short trousers, made of alternate strips of leopard hide and cloth (or 
perhaps of one strip with the hair side out, alternating with one skin-side 
out) extends to the knees. To his waist-belt, in front, is tied a bandolier, 
through which, on the right side, is thrust a dagger-like sword with a round 
hilt, and a scabbard closely resembling in shape, the wooden sheaths used in 
Northern Africa, of which there is a specimen in the Museum (M. 4942). 
On his left side, he carries a pouch, a hunting knife in a leather sheath, and 
an ornamented powder flask, made, it would seem, from a piece of elephant 
tusk. Cowrie armlets and anklets, with, what is known as, a mcnilio bracelet 
on the right wrist, and a coral one on the left, adorn his limbs. His head is 
covered with what may be a netted-twine cap, having a metal-like ornament 
fixed at each quadrant, and a top knot of feathers, with two straps, re- 
sembling chin straps, round the back of the head. Lying between his feet, 
are a manilio, a number of small round pellets, and either a decapitated human 
head, or its mask, encircled with a chaplet of feathers. The tribal marks on 
this head are of the Benin pattern—a central line down the forehead to the 
root of the nose, and other three longitudinally above the eyebrows. The 
most interesting detail of the statuette is the well-modelled European flint-lock 
which the hunter holds ready in his hands, as it affords a means of fixing the 
date anterior to which this casting could not have been executed, 7.¢., 1630 to 
1640, the date of the invention of flint-locks. The hunter’s own tribal marks 
are three raised scars over each eye. 
The whole of the statuette appears to have been carefully chiselled over, 
polished, and chased after having been cast. It was found in a Juju house in 
the King’s compound. Its Registered number is 21.12.97.4. 

V. The next object—a Tusk-holder—is one of very great ethnological in- 
terest. Two views of one of a pair, hardly differing from each other, possessed 
by the Museum, are given in Figs. 7, and 8. Each is a hollow pedestal 
340 mm. in height, and 590 in circumference, in which a richly and curiously- 
carved elephant’s tusk was supported upon one of the sacrificial altars, in a 
Juju (or fetish) compound in the King’s village. In his very interesting 
volume, already referred to, Commander Bacon, R.N., gives the following 
