In the food bowl illustrated in plate CXLI, _b_, we find the two circles shown, and between them a rectangular pictograph the meaning of which is not clear. The only suggestion which I have in regard to the significance of this object is that it is an example of substitution--the substitution of a prayer offering to the mythic bird represented in the other bowls for a figure of the bird itself. This interpretation, however, is highly speculative, and should be accepted only with limitations. I have sometimes thought that the prayer-stick or paho may originally have represented a bird, and the use of it is an instance of the substitution[146] of a symbolic effigy of a bird, a direct survival of the time when a bird was sacrificed to the deity addressed. [Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CXLI FOOD BOWLS WITH FIGURES OF BIRDS AND FEATHERS FROM SIKYATKI] [Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CXLII VASES, BOWLS, AND LADLE, WITH FIGURES OF FEATHERS, FROM SIKYATKI] The studies of the conventional bird figures which are developed in the preceding pages make it possible to interpret one of the two pictures on the food bowl represented in plate CLII, while the realistic character of the smaller figure leaves no question that we can rightly identify this also as a bird. In the larger figure the wings are of unequal size and are tipped with appendages of a more or less decorative nature. The posterior part of the body is formed of two triangular extensions, to which feathers are suspended, and the tail is composed of three large pointed feathers. The head bears the terraced rain-cloud designs almost universal in pictographs of birds. It is hardly necessary for me to indicate the head, body, wings, and legs of the smaller figure, for they are evidently avian, while the character of the beak would indicate that a parrot or raptorial genus was intended. The same beak is found in the decoration of a vase with a bird design, which will later be considered. From an examination of the various figures of birds on the Sikyatki pottery, and an analysis of the appendages to the wings, body, and legs, it is possible to determine the symbolic markings characteristic of two different kinds of feathers, the large wing or tail feathers and the so-called breath or body feathers. There is therefore no hesitation, when we find an object of pottery ornamented with these symbols, in interpreting them as feathers. Such a bowl is that shown in plate CXLI, _c_, in which we find a curved line to which are appended three breast feathers. This curved band from which they hang may take the form of a circle with two pendent feathers as in plate CXLI, _d_.