It is not without reason that some of the larger mounds in the midst of those emblematic earthworks have been designated observatory mounds, and assumed to have been constructed in order to afford a view of the laborious devices. Ordinarily the mound builder is tempted to give greater prominence to his tumulus by erecting it on the summit of a hill or bluff; but on the prairie land of Wisconsin, such natural elevations are wanting; and hence the construction of a class of works for which the lowest levels were preferred. The “Big Elephant Mound,” which measures 135 feet in length, is constructed in a valley gently sloping to the Mississippi, a few miles below the junction of the Wisconsin River. The ridges on both sides offered a choice of elevated sites; but the bottom land nearly on a level with the Mississippi at high water, has been purposely chosen, so that the device might be surveyed from the neighbouring heights. Fancy is prompt to assign a meaning to the old modellers’ works. In this example, the prolonged snout, or proboscis, has led to its designation as the “Big Elephant Mound”; and the delineator of it, in the Smithsonian Report for 1872, so confidently relies on its purposed significance that he asks: “Is not the existence of such a mound good evidence of the contemporaneous existence of the mastodon and the Mound-Builders?” The figure, though comparatively large, is surpassed by many. Some indeed are on a gigantic scale. One mound of peculiar, but indeterminate form, tapers for a length of five hundred and seventy feet. At its smaller extremity or tail, it slightly curves to the east. At the opposite extremity are a large cross, and one of the largest circular mounds. Its device can no longer be recognised; but much ingenuity and still more labour, have been expended on its construction. Another remarkable group in Dade County, includes six quadrupeds of indeterminate species, six parallelograms, a large tumulus, a circle, and a human figure. The animals are grouped in two rows; and the tumulus seems as though it had been erected as an observatory from which to view the elaborate design. An ingenious English critic recognises in it the possible memorial of a triumph like that of the ancient Greek charioteer in the national games, with the appropriate substitution of a sledge for the chariot, and a train of dogs for the fleet racers of the hippodrome. “Taking,” he says, “the rudeness of the age and workmanship into account, the impracticability of the material, and the scale and material, the whole is really not a bad representation of the dog-drawn sledges of the Kamschatdales of the present day. Supposing their horns to have been omitted, from the impracticability of raising earthworks that would stand well, and in proportion to represent them, they might have signified the elk or the reindeer. Whatever animal, however, be taken, it is perhaps a legitimate inference that we have here the colossal trophy of a super-Atlantic