140 TKANSACtlONS OF THE [MAY 9, 



a boulder, since weathered surfaces would only be found on a 

 fragment that had been exposed. The lapidarian work on this 

 piece is probably equal to anything that has ever been found, 

 and the polish is as fine as that produced by modern man. 



Of additional interest is the fact, that, although this adze is 

 undoubtedly one of the finest objects which these Aztecs or 

 Mayas possessed, yet they desired to "extend" the material, as 

 it may be termed, as has been described by Dr. J. J. Valentini 

 before the American Antiquarian Society, as to the origin of the 

 Leyden plate, April 27th, 1868, p. 11, and more recently by Prof. 

 F. W. Putnam in his paper before the American Antiquarian 

 Society, new series, vol. 5, April, 1886, on the Central American 

 celts, showing how they had been cut into two and even four 

 pieces. 



There have been two fully successful and one partly successful 

 attempts to remove pieces from this object, evidently for the 

 purpose of making other objects (the supply of material being 

 exhausted), and possibly from the wish to bestow on new 

 branches of the same tribe portions of a material which they 

 held as sacred, or to bury the pieces with deceased chiefs. Enough 

 has been cut from the back of the object to equal one-eighth of 

 the entire weight, and the instrument used in cutting it has pro- 

 duced a rounded cut on each opposite side from where the cut- 

 ting was done, lending credence to the theory that some abrasive 

 was used, such as sand or sapphire, by means of a string held in 

 the hands or stretched across a bow. In the American Journal 

 of Science for July, 188i, the writer has described a sapphire 

 pebble found in a brook in Oaxaca, almost equal to that from 

 Ceylon. If they knew of the existence of this sapphire, we can 

 more readily understand liow they worked so large a mass of 

 tough and hard material. The material is jadeite, its hardness 

 being 7, in the Mohs' scale. 



So far as the writer has been able to ascertain, no similar ob- 

 ject of equal magnitude and archaeological interest exists. The 

 Humboldt celt, the Leyden plate, the Vienna adze, and the one 

 in the Ethnological Museum at Dresden, which weighs only 

 seven pounds, and is entirely devoid of ornamentation, can 

 scarcely compare with it. 



