First. We notice the fact alluded to by Mr. Holmes,[74] which is apparent to every one who inspects his accurately drawn figures, that in all their leading features the designs themselves are suggestive of Mexican or Central American work. Yet a close inspection brings to light one or two features which are anomalies in Mexican or Central American designs; as, for example, in Figs. 42 and 43, where the wings are represented as _rising from the back of the shoulders_, a fact alluded to by Mr. Holmes.[75] Although we can find numerous figures of winged individuals in Mexican designs (they are unknown in Central American), they always carry with them the idea that the individual is partly or completely clothed in the skin of the bird. This is partially carried out in our copper plate, as we see by the bird-bill over the head, the eye being that of the bird and not of the man. But when we come to the wings we at once see that the artist had in mind the _angel figure_, with wings arising from the _back of the shoulders_, an idea wholly foreign to Mexican art. It is further worthy of note in regard to these two plates that there is a combination of Central American and Mexican designs: the graceful limbs, and the ornaments of the arms, legs, waist, and top of the head are Central American, and the rest, with the exception possibly of what is carried in the right hand, are Mexican. That these plates are not the work of the Indians found inhabiting the southern sections of the United States, or of their direct ancestors, I freely concede. That they were not made by an aboriginal artisan of Central America or Mexico of ante-Columbian times, I think is evident, if not from the designs themselves, certainly from the indisputable evidence that the work was done with hard metallic tools. [Illustration: FIG. 48.--Copper plate from Illinois mound.] Second. Plates like those of this collection have only been found, so far as I can ascertain, in northern Georgia and northern and southern Illinois. The bird figure represented in Fig. 48 was obtained by Major Powell, the director of the United States Geological Survey, from a mound near Peoria, Illinois. Another was obtained in Jackson County, Illinois, by Mr. Thing, from an ordinary stone grave. From another similar grave, at the same place, he also obtained the plate represented in Fig. 49. Fragments of a similar plate were obtained by Mr. Earle from a stone grave in a mound in Alexander County, Illinois. All these specimens were received by the Bureau of Ethnology and deposited in the National Museum. [Illustration: FIG. 49.--Copper plate from Indian grave, Illinois.]