whatever significance they may have had to the race that built them, to
the uninstructed eyes of modern investigators they are meaningless and
are as likely to have been intended for inanimate as animate objects.

There are many examples among the animal shapes that possess
peculiarities affording no hint of animals living or extinct, but which
are strongly suggestive of the play of mythologic fancy or of
conventional methods of representing totemic ideas. As in the case of
the animal carvings, the latter suggestion is perhaps the one that best
corresponds with their general character.


THE "ELEPHANT" MOUND.

By far the most important of the animal mounds, from the nature of the
deductions it has given rise to, is the so-called "Elephant Mound," of
Wisconsin.

By its discovery and description the interesting question was raised as
to the contemporaneousness of the Mound-Builder and the mastodon, an
interest which is likely to be further enhanced by the more recent
bringing to light in Iowa of two pipes carved in the semblance of the
same animal, as well as a tablet showing two figures asserted by some
archæologists to have been intended for the same animal.

Although both the mound and pipes have been referred in turn to the
peccary, the tapir, and the armadillo, it is safe to exclude these
animals from consideration. It is indeed perhaps more likely that the
ancient inhabitants of the Upper Mississippi Valley were autoptically
acquainted with the mastodon than with either of the above-named