the shape of idols, small and big, masks, and vases, and of which there are many specimens in the museum and throughout the country, it is sufficient to say that it is all of the rudest kind, and derives its chief attraction and interest from its hideousness and almost entire lack of anything which indicates either artistic taste or skill on the part of its fabricators. Take any fair collection of what purports to be the products of Aztec skill and workmanship, and place the same side by side with a similar collection made in any of the most civilized of the islands of the Pacific—the Feejees, the Marquesas, or the Sandwich Islands, or from the tribes that live on Vancouver's Sound—and the superiority of the latter would be at once most evident and un-
collection certain specimens of bronze chisels, containing 97.87 per cent of copper and 2.13 per cent of tin, malleable, of a hardness inferior to iron, but yet sufficiently hard, in his opinion, to serve the purpose of a chisel. There is no proof, however, that such implements are of Aztec origin; and it is evident that they could do but little execution in carving a material so excessively hard as the stone of which the great idol, the sacrificial block of the museum, and the calendar stone in the wall of the cathedral, are composed. M. Charney, in the account of his recent explorations in Central America (communicated to the "North American Review," 1880-'81), states that he has seen some large, handsome specimens of ancient copper axes in Mexico, which were capable of doing service; resembling American axes, "except that, instead of having a socket for the haft, the latter was split and the head of the axe secured in the cleft." The general conclusions of this writer are, that the American races of Central America, at the time of the invasion of the Spaniards, "had reached the transition period between the age of polished stone and the bronze age."
