LOST AETS OF PRIMITIVE EACES. 151 



This pipe consists of hard, porphyry, and is wrought 

 from a single piece, like all others of a similar charac- 

 ter. I have already stated that it may be considered 

 as the simple or typical form of this class of imple- 

 ments. In the more elaborate specimens the bowl is 

 formed in some instances in imitation of the human 

 head, but generally of the body of an animal, and 

 in the latter cases the peculiar characteristics of the 

 species which have served as models, comprising 

 mammals, birds, and amphibia, are frequently ex- 

 pressed with surprising fidelity; a modern artist, 

 indeed, notwithstanding his far superior instruments, 

 would find no little difficulty in reproducing the more 

 finished of these objects, especially when carving them 

 from porphyry, which was the kind of stone chiefly 

 employed by the manufacturers/' 



What wonder is it that time, which "antiquates 

 antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, 

 hath yet spared these minor monuments ; " and how 

 strangely does it illustrate the religious fervour of the 

 old mound-builders that they could sacrifice hundreds 

 of these precious trophies of skill and labour in the 

 fires of their altar hearths. Whatever the objects of 

 their worship, or the ends they hoped to attain, they 

 could give no costlier offerings unless they had offered 

 their own lives on the altar. Lafitau informs us that 

 the shaping and perforation of a tomahawk was some- 

 times the work of a lifetime, and might be left un- 

 finished by the patient artist whose life-work it had 

 been. It is said that perforated pieces of rock-crystal, 



