In response to the wish of the author, Miss Fletcher has kindly furnished him with the following letter of explanation, received after the rest of the paper had been written: Consecration as applied to the color white in the article you have quoted needs a few words of explanation. The almost universal appropriation of white animals to religious ceremonies is unquestionable; whether this selection rests wholly upon the rarity of this color is a little doubtful. The unusual is generally wakan; this feeling, however, is not confined to a color, and although the white buffalo and the white deer are not often met with, other white animals, as the rabbit, are not uncommon, nor are white feathers. It is true these white feathers are often colored for ceremonial uses, but the added colors have their particular meanings, and these do not seem to override the primal signification that the feathers selected to bear these symbolic colors are white. The natural suggestion that a white ground would best serve to set off the added lines may have been in the distant past the simple reason why white feathers were chosen; and this choice adhered to for generations would at last become clothed with a mysterious significance. If this were ever true, this reason for choosing white feathers is not recognized to-day. I have been frequently told, the feathers must be white. While I should now hesitate to say that white symbolizes consecration, still, after continued study, I find the idea clinging about the color, which, as I said then, is seldom artificially used. Various symbolic colors are not infrequently placed upon one object, so that the combining of symbols,[304] or even their occasional exchange, does not seem discordant to the Indian mind; this fact among others renders it difficult to draw a hard and fast line about any one color or symbol.