184 
signs (they are unknown in Central-American), 
they always carry with them the idea that the 
individual is partly or ee clothed in the 
skin of the bird. This is partially carried out 
in our copper plate, as we see by the bird-bill 
over the head ; the eye being that of the bird, 
and not of the man. But when we come to the 
wings, we at once see that the artist had in mind 
the angel figure with wings arising from the 
back of the;shoulders, — an idea wholly foreign 
to Mexican art. 
| Another fact worthy of note, in regard to 
these two plates, is that there is a combination 
of Central-American and Mexican designs: the 
graceful limbs, and the ornaments of the arms, 
Fig. 10. 
legs, waist, and top of the head, are Central 
American ; and the rest, with the exception, _ 
possibly, of what is carried in the right hand, 
Mexican. 
SCIENCE. 
[Vor IIL, No. 73. 
That these plates are not the work of the Indi- 
ans found inhabiting the southern sections of 
the United States, or of their direct ancestors, 
I freely concede. That they were not made 
by an aboriginal artisan of Central America or 
Mexico of ante-Columbian times, I think is 
evident, if not from the designs themselves, 
from the indisputable evidence that the work 
was done with hard metallic tools. 
Second, Plates like those of this collection 
have only been found, so far as I can ascer- 
tain, in northern Georgia and northern and 
southern Illinois. The bird figure represented 
in fig. 9 was obtained by Major Powell, the 
y ee “N 
a oe >» 
oe CO 
e \ ANY NG : 
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Xe ae 
~~ —S 7 
S- 
ot NN wees! = 
Fre. 11. 
director of the U. S. geological survey, from a 
mound near Peoria, Ill. Another was obtained 
in Jackson county, Ill., by Mr. Thing, while 
engaged by the Bureau of ethnology, from 
an ordinary stone grave. From another simi- 
lar grave, at the same place, he also obtained 
the plate represented in fig. 10. Fragments 
of another similar plate were obtained by Mr. 
Earle from a stone grave in a mound in Alex- 
ander county, Ill. All these specimens were 
received by the Bureau of ethnology, and are 
now in the National museum. 
I cannot enter at present into a discussion ~ 
of the questions raised by the discovery of 
these engraved shells ; nor is it necessary that 
\ 
