8 On the Ethnography and Archeology 
should present so great a variety in the configuration of the head 
and face; a fact which forcibly impresses every one who ex- 
amines the numerous efligies in baked clay in the collection of 
the American Philosophical Society; yet. they are all made of 
the same material and by the same national artists. 'The varieties 
are indeed endless ; and Mr. Norman in his first work, has arrived 
at a reasonable conclusion, in which we entirely agree with him, 
“that the people prepared these penates according to their respec- 
tive tastes, and with little reference to any standard or canon.’””* 
They appear to have exercised much ingenuity in this way, 
blending almost every conceivable type of the human counte- 
nance, and associating this again with those of beasts, birds, and 
various fanciful animals, which last are equal in uncouthness to 
any productions of the Gothic artists of the middle ages. 
. Norman in his late and interesting volume of travels in 
Cuba and Mexico, discovered in the latter country some remark- 
able ruins near the town of Panuco, and among them a curious 
sepulchral effigy. ‘It was a handsome block or slab of stone, 
(wider at one end than the other, ) measuring seven feet in length, 
with an average of nearly two and a half feet in width and one 
foot in thickness. Upon its face was beautifully wrought, in bold 
relief, the full length figure of a man, ina loose robe with a girdle 
about his loins, his arms crossed on his breast, his head encased. 
in a close cap or casque, resembling the Roman helmet (as repre- 
sented in the etchings of Pinelli) without the crest, and his feet 
and ankles bound with the ties of sandals. The figure is that of 
a tall muscular man of the finest proportions. The face, in all its 
features, is of the noblest class of the pent se or Caucasian 
race. if 
‘Mr. Norman was himself struck “with the resemblance be- 
tween this, and the stones that cover the tombs of the Knights 
‘Templar in some of the ancient churches of the old world,” but 
he thinks that neither this nor any other circumstance proves this 
effigy to have been of European origin or of modern date. ‘“'The 
material,” he adds, “is the same as that of all the buildings and 
works of art in this vicinity, and the style and workmanship are 
those of ‘the sg unknown. artists of the western chanel ; 
Arpechna is Yossi, p- 216. 
Rasy Land ad Wats,» 145. 
EE aR IS ON 
