groups of blocks, three in each
group, representing stars, as will later be shown. The semicircular
head has lost all appendages and is reduced to a rain-cloud symbol.
The posterior angles of the body are much prolonged, and the tail
still bears the markings representing three tail-feathers.

The association of a cross with the bird figure is both appropriate
and common; its modified form in this decoration is not exceptional,
but why it is appended to the wings is not wholly clear. We shall see
its reappearance on other bowls decorated with more highly
conventionalized bird figures.

In the peculiar decoration used in the treatment of the food bowl
shown in plate CXXXIX, _c_, we have almost a return to geometric
figures in a conventional representation of a bird. In this case the
semblance to wings is wholly lost in the line drawn diametrically
across the interior of the bowl. On one side of it there are many
crosses representing stars, and on the other the body and tail of a
bird. The posterior triangular extensions of the former are continued
to a bounding line of the bowl, and no attempt is made to represent
feathers in the tail. The rectangular figure, with serrated lower edge
and inclosed terraced figures, finds, however, a homologue in the
heads and bodies of most of the representations of birds which have
been described.

This gradual reduction in semblance to a bird has gone still further
in the figure represented in plate CXXXIX, _d_, where the posterior
end of the body is represented by two spurs, and the tail by three
feathers, the triangular rain-clouds still persisting in the
rectangular body. In fact, it can hardly be seen how a more
conventionalized figure of a bird were possible did we not find in _e_
of the same plate this reduction still greater. Here the tail is
represented by three parallel lines, the posterior of the body by two
dentate appendages, and the body itself by a square.

[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CXL

FIGURES OF BIRDS FROM SIKYATKI]

In plate CXL, _c_, we have a similar conventional bird symbol where
two birds, instead of one, are represented. In both these instances it
would appear that the diametric band, originally homologous to wings,
had lost its former significance.

It must also be pointed out that there is a close likeness between
some of these so-called conventionalized figures of birds and those of
moths or butterflie