one
time a very large amount of carved objects in wood, but,
unfortunately, most of these must have been destroyed when the British
burned the city in 1897. Very little of such work, therefore, has
survived. What it may have been like cannot be definitely said, yet
some hint might be gained from a few specimens that escaped the fire,
though these specimens are probably modern in their execution.

One such object is a wooden casket in the form of a bullock's head,
with two hands jutting out of the forehead and grasping the horns of
the animal. The casket is supported by a pedestal of appropriate size
and is decorated to represent cowries. "The ears of the bullock's head
are covered with embossed brass work, and there are strips of brass of
scroll pattern running down the bullock's face and fastened on with
small brass staples."[21]

In this connection it might be mentioned that there are some carved
coconut shell in which the Negro carver often expressed his ingenuity.
These represent in their carving a varied number of forms, including
human beings, animals and plants. The interest in these carvings, as
Roth tells us, "lies in their demonstration of the adaptability of the
native to perform creditably on a material very different from ivory.
Fair ingenuity is displayed in the manner in which the figures are
grouped on a confined surface without overcrowding. In fact, the
feature of the work is the careful distribution and general freedom of
treatment. The details of the carvings are throughout in low relief,
remarkably clean and neat and of a uniform depth."[22]

So far no carved objects in stone, granite, marble, or the like, have
come to view in the immediate Benin territory. This, of course, is
natural enough when it is remembered, as has been pointed out, that
there are no such materials to be found in the country. In 1911,
however, Leo Frobenius discovered in his excavations of Ilife, a few
hundred miles farther back in the interior, a number of carved stone
objects which are interesting from several points of view. In the
first place, might be considered the circumstance and position in
which these objects were found. Many of these objects were dug up out
of the earth at a depth of from eighteen to twenty feet, but several
were found set up in tombs and isolated spots in the African forest.
These forests are described by Frobenius as being sacred groves where
the present-day natives worship their gods. Frobeni