L 
58 BULLETIN OF THE LIVERPOOL MUSEUMS. 
course, be removed from the chiselled portions—or is a patina artificially pro- 
duced, or naturally arising from long exposure to the air, is not yet 
determined. If these (and other) figures be of the antiquity, which there is 
some evidence to show they are, it appears rather surprising to find, after so 
long an exposure to the air and weather, any clay adhering to them ; and 
practically no oxidation of the metal. 
VI. The well-modelled feline, represented in Fig. 9. (Register number: 
21.12.97.3), requires little description ; its spots are sufficient to identify it. 
It differs from all the other castings the Museum has acquired, in being 
hollow. This leopard was found, along with a massive ivory kneeling figure— 
now also in the Museum,—on the altar of a dwelling-house, as I learn from 

Fie. 9. Hottow-cast LroparD, WITH ENAMEL SPors. 
Mr. F. Roth, the District Medical Officer of Warri, in H.M. Niger Coast 
Protectorate, and Advance Surgeon to the flying column during the punitive 
expedition, from whom the Museum acquired this notable specimen. “ Every 
native house,” he writes, ‘in Benin city had a little room, or open raised 
place, near the entrance, in which figures were placed, just like the little 
altars which one sees in Roman Catholic countries. These little Juju houses, 
nearly always placed near the entrance, seemed to guard the place and keep 
off evil spirits. . . . Most of the figures were in clay, painted white ; 
the brass and ivory ones were not painted but covered with blood, human or 
otherwise—otherwise being that of dogs, birds, small animals, &c.” Consul- 
(teneral Moor, in his official report, observes that in these private Juju rooms 
“mbbish of all sorts was collected as offerings, carved sticks, rough plaster 
figures, and cowries being the most frequent.” 
The spots on the animal were evidently cast as hollow thin-walled pits (with 
