Suitable material is not at hand for the proper comparison of the lamps used by the different branches of the Eskimo race. All travelers who have written about the Eskimo speak of the use of such lamps, which agree in being shallow, oblong dishes of stone. Dr. Bessels[N199] figures a lamp of soapstone from Ita, Smith Sound, closely resembling No. 89880, and a little lamp in the Museum from Greenland is of essentially the same shape, but deeper. The same form appears at Hudson Strait in the lamps collected by Mr. L. M. Turner, while those used at Iglulik are nearly semicircular.[N200] South of Kotzebue Sound lamps of the shape so common in the east are used, but these, Mr. Turner informs me, are never made of soapstone, but always of sandstone, shale, etc. The people of Kadiak and the Aleuts anciently used lamps of hard stone, generally oval in shape, and sometimes made by slightly hollowing out one side of a large round pebble.[N201] Such a rough lamp was brought by Lieut. Stoney, U.S. Navy, from Kotzebue Sound. No such highly finished and elaborate lamps as the large house lamps at Point Barrow are mentioned except by Nordenskiöld, who figures one from Siberia.[N202] This lamp is interesting as the only one described with a ledge comparable to the shelf of No. 89879. Lamps from the region between Point Barrow and Boothia Felix are especially needed to elucidate the distribution and development of this utensil. The rudely hollowed pebble of the ancient Aleut and the elaborate lamp of the Point Barrow Eskimo are evidently the two extremes of the series of forms, but the intermediate patterns are still to be described. [Footnote N199: Naturalist, September, 1884, p. 867, Fig. 2.] [Footnote N200: Parry, Second Voyage, Pl. opposite p. 548, Fig. 2.] [Footnote N201: See Dall, Alaska, p. 387; and Petroff Report, etc., p. 141. See also the collections of Turner and Fischer from Attu and Kadiak.] [Footnote N202: Vega, vol. 2, p. 23, Fig. _b_ on p. 22, and diagrams, p. 23.] Fig. 50, No. 56492 [108], is a peculiar article of which only one specimen was collected. We were given to understand at the time of purchasing it that it was a sort of socket or escutcheon to be fastened to the wall above a lamp to hold the blubber stick described above. No such escutcheons, however, were seen in use in the houses visited. The article is evidently old. It is a flat piece of thick plank of some soft wood, 11.4 inches long, 4.2 broad, and about 1½ thick, very rudely carved into a human head and body without arms, with a large round hole about 1¼ inches in diameter through the middle of the breast. The eyes and mouth are incised, and the nose was in relief, but was long ago split off. There is a deep furrow all around the head, perhaps for fastening on a hood. CLOTHING. MATERIAL.