68 



A STUDY OF CHIRIQUIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



the web-foot of the frog, something that would hardly have been attempted 

 originally in clay. 



The goldsmith, on the other hand, sometimes borrowed forms that are essentially 

 ceramic in character, as when figure 100 was copied more or less faithfully in 

 figure 347, which represents in metal a short round-bodied frog with bulging eyes 

 and a median dorsal band reaching from the nose to the end of the spinal cord. 

 In the terra cotta frog, the body is hollow and supplied with a clay pellet; the 

 eyes are solid lumps of clay. In the metal frog, the bell-shaped eyes, provided 

 with pellets of copper, function as rattles. The ornaments on the shoulder of the 

 vase reproduced in figure 101 resemble the frog in the tadpole stage. 



Fig. 101. Vase with shoulder ornaments re- 

 presenting frog in tadpole stage. Armadillo 

 ware. '/> 



Fig. 102. Vase with zobmorphic shoulder orna- 

 ment. Armadillo ware. 'I' 



The frog was abundant, especially during the wet season, January to April, 

 and must have been an important totemic animal. In speaking of the abundance 

 of toads about Porto Bello, Seemann quotes Lloyd, as follows : " So prodigious is 



Fig. 103. Vase with grotesque zoomorphic shoulder 

 ornament. Armadillo ware. '/ 



Fig. 104. Fantastic zoomorphic shoulder decora- 

 tion. Armadillo ware. / 



their number after rain, that the popular prejudice is that the rain-drops are changed 

 into toads (' de cada gota viene un sapo'); and even the more learned maintain 

 that the eggs of this animal are raised with the vapor from the adjoining swamps, 

 and, being conveyed to the city by the rains, are there hatched. The large size 



