256 The American Naturalist. [Mareh, 
Pottawotamies and Iowas, and we are shown it decorating the bull hide 
war-shields of the Pimas of Arizona and painted on the triangular 
female waist covers “ (fig leaves) ” of the Caneotires river Indians of 
Brazil. 
The book enumerates the theories of those investigators who would 
derive the Swastika from the sun, from the earth, from fertility, from the 
meander design, from the cross, from the fire drill, from the four 
quarters of the world, and of those who deny the possibility of account- 
ing for it at all. But the interesting question raised by Mr. Wilson is 
how did it get to America? In answer to which certain American 
students would probably contend that it grew here, that the outline 
is too simple to have required suggestion from abroad, that pre-Colum- 
bian Americans might have taken to drawing, painting scratching or 
stamping it on any object at any time, thus only showingthat the human 
an mind under given environments acts similarly. 
As opposed to this conservatism Mr. Wilson declines to class the 
Swastika among the simple things such as the drawing of circles cres- 
cent moons or animal tracks, the wearing of beads, or, I may add, the 
habits of whistling, beckoning or nodding assent,’ ete., ete.—the easy 
and inevitable things that all men think of spontaneously and without 
suggestion from abroad. He will let the cross fall into this category 
but not the Swastika. To twist the cross arms into a Swastika is, he 
holds, an inconsequent after thought, and the figure is held to be pecu- 
liar, difficult and suggestive. Always associated with luck among mod- 
ern North American Indians, marked on the triangular waist cover of 
the Brazilian Indian woman as upon the waist of the Goddess Artemis 
excavated at Hissarlik, why, he asks, did it not migrate from Asia be- 
fore Columbus, as had migrated the winged globe to Mesopotamia (from 
Phoenicia and Egypt) the Greek fret to modern Europe (through Egypt 
from Greece) the Northumberland rampant lion (through Flanders 
from Albania) or the Austrian double headed eagle to Europe (through 
the Emperor Frederic II from the Turcomans and Hittites.) 
If it is as old as the European bronze age it is older than and might 
have migrated before Buddhism (6th century B.C.). So that it would 
not signify, as Mr. Wilson urges that no sure memento of Buddha 
worship has been found with it in the United States. 
2I do not know whether the fact that the modern Egyptians who are inveterate 
singers, do not whistle has been noticed, but I heard no Arab o r Fe ellah whis istle 
of nodding it to rrie and to beckon a oe — them, turn 
- the right palm downward and motioned outward with the fingers 
