Fig. 18.Fig. 19.
a hunter. I believe the idea is that when a tribe conquers another tribe they take their totem and put their own on the top: and then again, if that tribe is conquered, the totem of the conquering tribe is again put on top. Now obviously
these animals are strong and solid, so they can bear all that weight upon them without getting squashed. But the air is not like that. The air beneath gets squashed down by the air on top. So it would be like the second picture (Fig. 19), when the raven gets squashed flat by all the weight it supports: and even the bear above it gets very much flattened. That is how our air gets treated near the Earth. But high up it gets thin like the chief on the top of the second picture, because there is nothing to squash it. The air is not of course divided into separate layers, as the totem-post is divided into separate animals, but it will do no harm to
