ART. 14. THE JADE OF THE TUXTLA STATUETTE WASHINGTON. 3 



Below the head, the shape of the bod.y is determined somewhat by 

 the shape of the boulder out of which the statuette was caiwed. 

 There are no arms but, as Holmes says, " The idea of the bird sug- 

 gested by the beak is further carried out by wings covering the 

 sides of the figm-e, the lower margins of which are engraved with 

 alternating lines and rectangles to represent feathers." Legs and 

 feet are indicated by incised lines below the wings. 



The statuette has been made from a small boulder, of approxi- 

 mately the general shape of the figure, but with one end roughly 

 sawed across, leaving a smoothish surface, which serves as the base. 



Physical characters . —That the material is not of the usual ex- 

 treme toughness, characteristic of most jade, is indicated by two 

 rough gouges on the front and some spall scars on the front and 

 back (at the bottom edge) , the latter possibly the result of the figure 

 having been set down too violently on a hard (stone) surface. It is 

 also shown by the readiness with which the pieces that had been 

 partly sawed out were pried off with a knife blade,' as well as by the 

 ease with which the fragments were reduced to fine powder for 

 analysis. A similar brittleness has been found to be a character of 

 other Middle American jades. 



So far as I could see, there are no indications of the action of fire, 

 and the fracture surfaces mentioned seem to have been the results 

 of accidental percussion. At the lower left-hand corner of the back 

 a thin slice was sawed out parallel to the bottom surface to furnish 

 material for the examination by Tassin, and the space is now filled 

 with plaster of Paris, in which is embedded a small piece of thin 

 sheet iron. This is shown in figures 1, 2, and 3. 



The height of the statuette is 15 cm., the extreme width across the 

 base is 10 cm., and the depth across the base is 8.2 cm. The width 

 across the shoulders is 6 cm., the length of the beak is 4 cm., and the 

 distance between the eye pupils is 1.7 cm. The present weight is 

 2,259.48 grams, about 3 grams having been removed by me in ob- 

 taining material for the present study. 



The surface is polished, especially on the front, but not highly so. 

 The general color is a light, slightly yellowish and grayish green 

 (Ridgway's** " pea green," 29 ' ' ' ' b), but it is somewhat mottled. 



The hardness is 6.5, so that quartz tools could be used on the ma- 

 terial. The density was taken twice by Doctor Adams, who has had 

 much experience in determining the densities of rather large masses 

 in his studies of glass and the compressibility of rocks. The first 

 value found was 3.270 at 22°, and a second determination (made after 

 the removal of the portion for analysis) gave the value 3.269 at 

 25.35°. Both values are probably slightly in error because of the 



^Rid^vvay, Color Standards, Wash-tit;t!jn. 1912, pi. 47. 



