developed toward the surfaces; hence it is so porous that the filled vessel is moist even in the sun. [Illustration: FIG. 15—Seri olla ring.] Ordinarily women are the water-bearers, each carrying an olla balanced on the head with the aid of a slightly elastic annular cushion, usually fashioned of yucca fiber (plate XXXII and figure 15), though in some cases two ollas are slung in nets at the ends of a yoke (figure 16) after the Chinese coolie fashion (this device being apparently accultural). [Illustration: FIG. 16—Water-bearer’s yoke.] The function of the conventional Seri olla is exclusively that of a canteen or water-carrying vessel, and its form is suited to no other use; while its lines, like its thinness of wall, are adapted to the stresses of internal and external pressure in such wise as to give maximum strength with minimum weight. It is by reason of this remarkably delicate adaptation of materials to purposes that the plain olla figured in plate XXXIII, weighing an ounce or two more than 10 pounds in dry air, holds and safely carries three and one-third times its weight of water. When such ollas are broken, the larger pieces may be used as cups or dishes, or even as kettles, in the rare culinary operations of the tribe (as shown in plate X); but the entire vessels appear to be religiously devoted to their primary purpose. [Illustration: FIG. 17—Symbolic mortuary olla.] While some three-fourths of the observed fictile ware of the Seri and a still larger proportion of the scattered sherds represent conventional ollas, there are a few erratic forms. The most conspicuous of these is a smaller, thicker-walled, and larger-necked type, of which three or four examples were observed; two of these were in use (one is represented lying at the left of the jacal in plate X), and another was found cracked and abandoned on the desert east of Playa Noriega. The vessels of this type are used primarily as kettles and only incidentally as canteens. In both form and function they suggest accultural origin; but the ware is much like that of the conventional type. Another erratic type takes the form of a deep dish or shallow bowl, of rather thick walls and clumsy form, which may be accultural; a single example was observed in use (it is shown in plate XIV). There are also mortuary forms, including a miniature olla (figure 39) and bowl (figure 41), and such still smaller examples as those illustrated in figures 17 and 18. In addition to the utensils a few fictile figurines were found. Most of these were crude or distorted animal effigies, and one (broken) was a rudely shaped and strongly caricatured female figure some 2 inches high, with exaggerated breasts and pudenda. Analogy with neighboring tribes suggests that the very small vessels and the figurines are fetishistic appurtenances to the manufacture of the pottery; e. g., that the fetish is molded at the same time and from the same material as the olla, and is then burned with it,