62 CUP-SHAPED AND OTHER LAPIDAEIAN SCULPTUEES. 



into the river, is represented by Fig. 48, after a photograph kindly loaned 

 to me by Dr. Stubbs.* It shows four figures somewhat resembling human 

 faces, and four concentric rings with a cup-shaped depression in the middle. 

 These circles appear foreshortened in the sketch, but are correctly repre- 

 sented in Fig. 4i>, in one-twelfth of the real size. This type, as has been 

 seen, occurs frequently among the primitive lapidarian sculptures of Europe; 

 but hardly any ethnic significance can be ascribed to the presence of the 

 same design on Bald Friar Rock. It is a form which, on account of its 

 simpleness and regularity, doubtless suggested itself to nations who never 

 came in contact with each other, and who employed it either as an orna- 

 ment or for some symbolical purpose.f Of far greater interest, on the other 

 hand, are Figures 50 and 51, carefulh^ copied by Mr. Galbraith from the 

 rock in the Susquehanna Eiver. Both consist of concentric rings, the outer 

 of which has an appendage in the shape of a long straight groove, a feature 

 which assimilates these carvings in a high degree to types of the Old World 

 heretofore described, more especially to Figures 29, 30, and 31, which 

 represent Mahadeos in the Chandeshwar temple. Upon examination, it 

 will be found that the resemblance is very great— indeed so striking, that 

 an enthusiastic theorist might feel tem23ted to claim a kinship betvreen the 

 Asiatic Mahadeo-worshipers and those who sculptured the figures in ques- 

 tion on Bald Friar Rock. Yet, notwithstanding the similarity the latter 

 bear to the Chandeshwar sculptures, they may have been intended to 

 express a totally different idea. We must wait for more convincing dis- 

 closures. 



* For the salce of greater distinctness, I had the carved figures executed in black. On the upper 

 part of the rock are seen a few single cups. 



t Concentric circles, sculptured as well as painted on rocks, were frequently seen by Major Powell 

 and his assistants in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Many of them are known to have been executed 

 by the aborigines of those districts. Further on it will be seen that they arc perhaps even now painted 

 on rocks in the district of the Klamaths iu Oregon, and were formerly carved on boulders in Central 

 America. In 1879 the Smithsonian Institution received from Mr. W. W. Hays photographs of paintings 

 on a rock in San Luis Obispo County, California. They consist of figures of a most complicated char- 

 acter, among which several concentric circles appear. The colors, as Mr. Hays states in an accompany- 

 ing letter, are red, white, and black. The locality is mentioned iu Bancroft's "Native Races" (Vol. IV, 

 p. 691). Indeed, concentric circles seem to be ubiquitous. The late Professor C. F. Hartt observed 

 them, associated with a variety of other figures, iu ditferent parts of Brazil, as shown by his account iu 

 the "American Naturalist," May, 1871. 



Among the Ojibways concentric circles constituted, according to Schoolcraft, the symbol of 

 time (Vol. I, p. 409: Plate 58, Fig. (57). 



