NOTE ON TEXAS LAND SNAILS 



577 



would be merely an object of barter which 

 would be worked into useful forms else- 

 where. 



A large piece of tin was found among the 

 ruins of Maehu Piechui which was consid- 

 ered one of the most important discoveries 

 made in that ancient ruined city. This 

 piece of pure tin apparently had been rolled 

 up by the Peruvians and kept for making 

 bronze, slices being cut from it when needed 

 by the artisan. 



Those who have advocated the accidental 

 theory to account for the bronzes found in 

 South America have adduced as their chief 

 reason for that belief the fact that such 

 objects as knives or chisels often contain a 

 smaller percentage of tin than pieces like 

 spoons or pins which have no cutting edge ; 

 but this argument entirely loses force when 

 we inquire into the conditions under which 

 these things were made and the behavior of 

 copper and tin when melted together. It has 

 been pointed out 2 in writing of the bronze 

 statues of Alexander made by the celebrated 

 artist Lysippus, the three thousand bronze 

 statues found at Athens by the Eoman Consul 

 Mutianus, and the many statues at Olympia 

 and Delphi, that the ancients could not be 

 supposed to possess the skill of moderns in 

 dealing with this metal. Since they had no 

 means of ascertaining the actual composi- 

 tion of the alloys, they could not provide 

 against the oxidation of the tin and con- 



^ Hiram Bingham, The Story of Machu Picchu, 

 National Geographic Magazine, Feb., 1915. 



- A. Snowden Pig^ot, The Chemistry and Metal- 

 lurgy of Copper, 1858. 



sequent refining of the copper, one of the 

 greatest difficulties to be overcome. Analysis 

 has shown their bronzes to be variable in 

 composition, some of them having the cor- 

 rect proportion of tin while others are 

 nearly pure copper. But even modern works 

 have not always overcome this difficulty, in- 

 stances of failure being shown in the statue 

 of Desaix in the Place Dauphine and in the 

 column in the Place Vendome. Specimens 

 taken from the pedestal, shaft, and capital 

 of the latter were found on analysis to con- 

 tain in the first case six per cent of tin, in 

 the second much less, while the third was 

 nearly pure copper. Such statements as 

 these seem to explain satisfactorily the 

 variation in the quantity of tin found in 

 Peruvian bronzes. 



Finally, taking into consideration the 

 positive assertions of Gareilasso and Father 

 Barba that the Indians knew the secret of 

 combining tin with copper to harden their 

 implements ; the analyses, which show that 

 bronze objects contain considerable amounts 

 of tin, especially those found in Bolivia, 

 where it is now pretty certain that the cop- 

 per ores contain no tin; the discovery of a 

 piece of tin in the ruins of Machu Picchu; 

 the finding of smelting furnaces, slag con- 

 taining tin, and molds for casting in Argen- 

 tina — where all known coppers have no tin 

 in their impurities; and such facts as can 

 be gathered concerning the composition of 

 all copper ores in the region under discus- 

 sion, we can but come to the belief that the 

 accidental theory of the production of an- 

 cient bronze must be abandoned. 



Note on Texas Land Snails 



By E D. D. C R A B B 



Written while in military service at Camp Boivie, Fort Worth, Texas 



A S THE medical department of the First 

 / \ Oklahoma Infantry was marching 

 J, V from the train to its cantonment, we 

 noticed a great many snail shells on the 

 ground; and over the prairie where the in- 

 fantry had not marched we saw the mollusks 

 clinging to the grass and weeds, some at- 

 tached to the tops as well as to the lower 

 parts of the mesquite bushes. In places 



these mollusks wovo so numerous that their 

 white shells, shining in the morning sun, 

 suggested, as one of the men said, that "even 

 the prairie weeds blossom snails in Texas!" 

 The infantry marched in colimms of fours 

 from the trains to the cantonment, destroy- 

 ing almost every snail along the line of 

 march. The mollusks were brushed off the 

 weeds by the men in the front ranks, and the 



