[Footnote 143: In the evolution of ornament among the Hopi, as among most primitive peoples where new designs have replaced the old, the meaning of the ancient symbols has been lost. Consequently we are forced to adopt comparative methods to decipher them. If, for instance, on a fragment of ancient pottery we find the figure of a bird in which the wing or tail feathers have a certain characteristic symbol form, we are justified, when we find the same symbolic design on another fragment where the rest of the bird is wanting, in considering the figure that of a wing or tail feather. So when the prescribed figure of the feather has been replaced by another form it is not surprising to find it incomprehensible to modern shamans. The comparative ethnologist may in this way learn the meanings of symbols to which the modern Hopi priest can furnish no clue.] [Footnote 144: In an examination of many figures of ancient vessels where this peculiar design occurs it will be found that in all instances they represent feathers, although the remainder of the bird is not to be found. The same may also be said of the design which represents the tail-feathers. This way of representing feathers is not without modern survival, for it may still be seen in many dolls of mystic personages who are reputed to have worn feathered garments.] [Footnote 145: At the present time the circle is the totemic signature of the Earth people, representing the horizon, but it has likewise various other meanings. With certain appendages it is the disk of the sun--and there are ceremonial paraphernalia, as amulets, placed on sand pictures or tied to helmets, which may be represented by a simple ring. The meaning of these circles in the bowl referred to above is not clear to me, nor is my series of pictographs sufficiently extensive to enable a discovery of its significance by comparative methods. A ring of meal sometimes drawn on the floor of a kiva is called a "house," and a little imagination would easily identify these with the mythic houses of the sky-bird, but this interpretation is at present only fanciful.] [Footnote 146: The _paho_ is probably a substitution of a sacrifice of corn or meal given as homage to the god addressed.] [Footnote 147: _Journal of American Ethnology and Archæology_, vol. IV. These water gourds figure conspicuously in many ceremonies of the Tusayan ritual. The two girls personating the Corn-maids carry them in the Flute observance, and each of the Antelope priests at Oraibi bears one of these in the Antelope or Corn dance.] [Footnote 148: "A few Tusayan Pictographs;" _American Anthropologist_, Washington, January, 1892.] [Footnote 149: A beautiful example of this kind was found at Homolobi in the summer of 1896.]