ve tokens
of Chinese origin, the deer's antlers; and along with it a snake with
less specialized horns suggesting the Cerastes of Egypt and Babylonia. A
horned viper distantly akin to the Cerastes of the Old World does occur
in California; but its "horns" are so insignificant as to make it highly
improbable that they could have been in any way responsible for the
obtrusive role played by horns in these widespread American stories.
But the proof of the foreign origin of these stories is established by
the horned serpent's achievements.

It "lives in the water or the sky" like its homologue in the Old World,
and it is "a water spirit". Now neither the Cobra nor the Cerastes is
actually a water serpent. Their achievements in the myths therefore have
no possible relationship with the natural habits of the real snakes.
They are purely arbitrary attributes which they have acquired as the
result of a peculiar and fortuitous series of historical incidents.

It is therefore utterly inconceivable and in the highest degree
improbable that this long chain of chance circumstances should have
happened a second time in America, and have been responsible for the
creation of the same bizarre story in reference to one of the rarer
American snakes of a localized distribution, whose horns are mere
vestiges, which no one but a trained morphologist is likely to have
noticed or recognized as such.

But the American horned serpent, like its Babylonian and Indian
homologues, is also the enemy of the thunder bird. Here is a further
corroboration of the transmission to America of ideas which were the
chance result of certain historical events in the Old World, which I
have mentioned in this lecture.

In the figure on page 94 I reproduce a remarkable drawing of an American
dragon. If the Algonkin Indians had not preserved legends of a winged
serpent equipped with deer's antlers, no value could be assigned to this
sketch: but as we know that this particular tribe retains the legend of
just such a wonder-beast, we are justified in treating this drawing as
something more than a jest.

"Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. John Criley as occurring near Ava,
Jackson County, Illinois. The outlines of the characters observed by him
were drawn from memory and submitted to Mr. Charles S. Mason, of Toledo,
Ohio, through whom they were furnished to the Bureau of Ethnology.
Little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of such drawing, but
from the general