urrounded by a strong circular stockade,
spaces or breaks in the circle being left for entrance or exit.

Signs for _dog_ are made by some of the tribes of the plains
essentially the same as the following: Extend and spread the right,
fore, and middle fingers, and draw the hand about eighteen inches from
left to right across the front of the body at the height of the navel,
palm downward, fingers pointing toward the left and a little downward,
little and ring fingers to be loosely closed, the thumb against the
ring-finger. (_Dakota_ IV.) The sign would not be intelligible without
knowledge of the fact that before the introduction of the horse, and
even yet, the dog has been used to draw the tent- or lodge-poles in
moving camp, and the sign represents the trail. Indians less nomadic,
who built more substantial lodges, and to whom the material for poles
was less precious than on the plains, would not have comprehended this
sign without such explanation as is equivalent to a translation from
a foreign language, and the more general one is the palm lowered as if
to stroke gently in a line conforming to the animal's head and neck.
It is abbreviated by simply lowering the hand to the usual height
of the wolfish aboriginal breed, and suggests _the_ animal _par
excellence_ domesticated by the Indians and made a companion.

Several examples connected with this heading may be noticed under the
preceding head of gestures connected with pictographs, and others of
historic interest will be found among the TRIBAL SIGNS, _infra_.

NOTABLE POINTS FOR FURTHER RESEARCHES.

It is considered desirable to indicate some points to which for
special reasons the attention of collaborators for the future
publication on the general subject of sign language may be invited.
These now follow:

_INVENTION OF NEW SIGNS._

It is probable that signs will often be invented by individual Indians
who may be pressed for them by collectors to express certain ideas,
which signs of course form no part of any current language; but while
that fact should, if possible, be ascertained and reported, the signs
so invented are not valueless merely because they are original and not
traditional, if they are made in good faith and in accordance with the
principles of sign formation. Less error will arise in this direction
than from the misinterpretation of the idea intended to be conveyed by
spontaneous signs. The process resembles the coining of new w