DELAWARE COUNTY INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 

 MUSEUM CATALOGUE. 



Section : Anthropology. Department : America. 



I. Cast labeled " Cast of the Sculptured Double Serpent 

 found in a mound at Chillicothe, Ohio." The original was 

 found in a large earthwork on the North Fork of Paint Creek, 

 Ross County, Ohio, described in " Smithsonian Contributions 

 to Knowledge," Volume I, page 26. The material of the 

 original is a fine, cinnamon colored sandstone. The specimen 

 is supposed to represent a coiled rattlesnake. It has two 

 faces identical in sculpture except that one is plane and the 

 other slightly convex (hence the cast in the museum repre- 

 sents only half the original). The head of the original sculp- 

 ture was broken by the finder and lost, but it is reported that 

 the head was surrounded by feathers. The serpent entered 

 widely into the superstitions of the American nations. When- 

 ever it appears, whether among the Natchez, the Aztecs or 

 the temples of Central America, it is invariably the rattle- 

 snake. The feather headed rattlesnake was in Mexico the 

 peculiar symbol of Tezcatlipoca, otherwise symbolized as 

 the sun. 



' 2. Seven plaster casts. The exact counterpart of one of 

 these is described in "Smithsonian Contributions to Know- 

 ledge," Volume I, page 247, as being a sculpture in por- 

 phyry found in Ohio near Chillicothe. It is tc be presumed 

 from this and a general similarity of the other casts with 

 those depicted therein, that the entire seven casts represent 

 specimens from Ohio. On the other hand, in the minutes of 

 the Institute of October 7th, 1882, there occurs mention of a 

 donation by Mrs. William H. Miller, of Media, of a " box of 

 casts of Peruvian pottery." Although there is nothing in the 

 museum at all approaching the description of this donation 

 except the casts referred to, yet the balance of testimony 



