FEWEES] THE RUIN, SIKYATKI 251 
CurveD FIGURE WITH ATTACHED FEATHERS 
The curved spiral figures shown in plates 85 and 86 are combina- 
tions of simple and complicated designs, among the most conspicuous 
of which are feathers. When these figures are placed in the same 
position it is possible to recognize three or four components which 
are designated (a) spiral, (b) appendage to the tip of the spiral, 
(c) a bundle of feathers recalling a bird’s tail, and (d) and (e) 
other parts of unknown homology occasionally represented. In plate 
85, A the appendage 6 to the spiral a is two triangles and two sup- 
plemental spirals arising from their attachments. There is no rep- 
resentation of c, d, or e in this figure. 
In B of the same plate the elements a, b, c; and d are represented. 
The appendage 6 attached to the tip of the spiral a has the form 
of a feather of the first type (see pl. 76), and four parallel 
lines, ¢, indicating feathers, are attached to the body. The two 
toothlike appendages e, of unknown significance, complete the fig- 
ure. In plate 85, (, the design a has two dots 6 on the distal tip, 
from one of which arises a number of lines. The fact that 6 in fig- 
ure B is a feather leads to the belief that 6 in figure C’ is the same 
design. 
Plate 85, D and Z, have a resemblance in form, a and ¢ being repre- 
sented in both; 6 and e are wanting in #. The different elements in 
these designs can be readily seen by comparing the same lettering in 
F and G, and in plate 86, A and B, where a new element, ¢, is intro- 
duced. 
Plate 86, B and £, are highly conventionalized designs; they sug- 
gest bird form, examples of which have been already considered 
elsewhere, but are very much modified. 
There can be no doubt that it was intended to represent birds or 
parts of birds as feathers in many of the above figures, but the 
perspective is so distorted that their morphology or relative position 
on the bird to which they belong can not be made out. In plate 86, A, 
for instance, the bird’s body seems to be split in two parts and laid 
on a flat plane. The pendent body, ¢, in the middle would be a 
representation of a bird’s tail composed of three feathers and with 
a double triangle terminating in dots from which arise lines of 
would-be feathers. 
Two of the parts, a and ¢, that occur in the last mentioned, are 
found in plate 86, B, in somewhat modified form. Thus the position 
of the tail feathers, ¢, figure C, is taken by feathers of a different 
form, their extremities being cut off flat and not curved. The bundles 
of feathers in B and C are here reversed, the left side of B corre- 
sponding to the right of (, and the appendage on the left of the tail 
