408 



REPORT OF NATIONAL xMUSEUM, 1897. 



contracts inside to half an inch, the stem bole being of one fourth inch 

 uniform diameter. The gloss of these pipes is superior to any which 

 the writer has seen on pottery of any character from primitive Mexican 

 ruins or elsewhere. The surface, while smoothed as though with a 

 burnishing tool, gives the writer tbe imi)ression that prior to finishing 

 the pipe its surface liad been gone over with a scraping or cutting tool, 

 as it is covered with innumerable narrow facets under the glaze, indi- 

 cating rather a higher state of art than that evidenced in pre-Cortesian 

 Mexican ruins. 



There is in the Douglass collection one of these pipes, the bowl of 

 which is white, the stem being pink, the colors gradually blending. It 

 was found at Paleuque, and is similar in shape to the pipe here figured, 

 even to the glaze. A pipe of pottery in the same collection, which is 

 said to have been found at Chatahoochee, Georgia, has a very similar 

 form to the Mexican, though the base is not quite so Hat. 

 Fig. 4:3 is another clay pipe from the valley of Mexico, collected by 

 W. Batchelor, and of the same length and type as that 

 shown in the preceding figure. It is of a raw-sienna 

 color, having a bluish tinge; the walls of the bowl, 

 fig. 42, are, however, thicker, and the stem, also fiat 

 on the bottom, broadens toward the end to a width of 



1| inches. The surface of this 

 pipe is also glazed, and upon 

 its upper side a rude ornamen- 

 tation has been incised, subse- 

 quent to the firing. The pipe 

 looks as though it was in- 

 tended to represent a duck's 

 head and bill. The eyes con- 

 sist each of a central dot, surrounded by two concentric circles, the 

 outside one being 1^ inches in diameter, while upon tlie stem, on each 

 side, are two parallel lines following the contour of its outline to a point 

 where they join, an incision beginning on each side of the stem hole, 

 and rnuning parallel to each other for an inch or more, when they 

 curve inward and meet. The circles, measured by means of dividers, 

 appear to be eqnidistant from the central dot of the eye, though in a 

 similar specimen in the Douglass collection the rings appear slightly 

 elliptical. 



Professor Holmes refers to a pi])e i^reserved in the Mexic^an National 

 Museum, the bowl of which is in the shape of the head' of a creature, 

 whether qnadrn])ed or reptile it is impossible to say. The opening in 

 the bowl corresponding to the jaws has both below and above a circle 

 which appears to represent an eye, which, if they be intended for eyes, 

 the head is doubtless that of a snake, a common figure upon American 

 pipes. While the writer is inclined to see in the finish of these pipes 



Fig. 43. 



GLOSSY POTTERY PIPE. 



Mexico. 



Cat. No. 133, U.S.N.M. Colle.-ted hy W. Batchelor. 



' Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C, 1883 to 1885, 

 ]». 80, fig. 13. 



