202 Miscellanies. 



period, to determine the purpose or meaning of these works of art. I 

 have conversed with some old hunters and surveyors, who are well ac- 

 quainted with the habits and character of the Indians ; by them I am 

 informed that it is the constant habit of the natives, when they quit an 

 encampment, to leave some sign or hieroglyphic, designating the course 

 they intend to pursue, and that the place is abandoned. For these pur- 

 poses, what sign could be more appropriate than the prints of feet or 

 tracks? 



I am assured by an intelligent gentleman, who in early life was enga- 

 ged in surveying the public lands in the west, that he has often seen such 

 figures; sometimes a hand on a perpendicular surface, and print of feet 

 where the surface is horizontal, as on the bark of a standing tree, or 

 drawn with paint on a flat stone. 



From these facts, is it reasonable to conjecture, that when a tribe have 

 been compelled to abandon a permanent home, a more durable memorial 

 of the event may be made by some labored sculpture on a permanent 

 material, such as those found at St. Louis and here? The remarks of 

 Dr. Owen are perfectly satisfactory in explaining the mode in which these 

 works of art could be executed without the aid of iron. 



We would add in further illustration of this subject, that Mr. Grey, in 

 his journal of travels in Australia, Vol. I, p. 206,* gives a figure and the 

 following description of a head cut in sandstone rock. " I was moving 

 on when we observed the profile of a human face and head cut out in a 

 sandstone rock which fronted the cave; this rock was so hard, that to 

 have removed such a large portion of it with no better tool than a knife 

 and hatchet made of stone, such as the Australian natives generally pos- 

 sess, would have been a work of very great labor. The head was two 

 feet in length, and sixteen inches in breadth in the broadest part ; the 

 depth of the profile increased gradually from the edges where it was no- 

 thing, to the centre where it was an inch and a half: the ear was rather 



badly placed, but otherwise the whole of the work was good, and far be- 

 yond what a savage race could be supposed capable of executing. The 

 only proof of antiquity that it bore about it was, that all the edges of the 

 cutting were rounded and perfectly smooth, much more so than they 

 could have been from any other cause than long exposure to atmospheric 

 influences." — Eds. 



3, Dr. Draper's discovery of Latent Light, and of a curious class of 

 Spectral Appearances connected with Photography.— We find in the Nov. 

 number of the London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine, 

 a letter from Dr. Draper to the editors, from which it appears that certain 



* Journals of two Expeditions of Discovery in Northwestern and Western Aus- 

 tralia, during the years 1637, '8, ? 9 ; by George Grey, Esq. 2 VoU. Svo. Lon- 

 don, 1841, 



