1885.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 53 



and mica with persistent though unskilled industiy, and 

 wrought copper, silver, and, as Putnam has shown, meteoric 

 iron, with commendable skill. We have no proof that any of 

 these metals were melted and cast, an art which they would 

 certainly have acquired if they had been in communication 

 with the Old World. 



The civilizations of Mexico, Central America and Peru uere 

 much higher, the use of iron was apparently unknown, but the 

 smelting of other metals was understood, such as the union of 

 tin and copper to make bronze. They also practised the fusion 

 of gold and silver, the combination of copper and gold, and 

 the process known among jewelers as pickling — that is, dissolv- 

 solving the copper from the surface of an alloy of gold and 

 copper, and burnishing the gold to make it appear like a pure 

 and solid mass. And yet we fail to find proof that they bor- 

 rowed anything from other ci\alizations. As workers of stone 

 they had no superiors, their carving was elaborate and peculiar. 

 When we search elsewhere for similar work, we find nothing- 

 like it in the style of building or architectural decoration in any 

 of the monuments of Egypt, Assyria, Greece or Rome. We 

 do find, however, a marked similarity between the decorative 

 ideas of the inhabitants of Central America as expressed in 

 their monuments and those of the Indians of the northwestern 

 coast with their multitudinous carvings in stone and wood, the 

 decorations of their canoes and totem posts. Also with the 

 characteristic carvings of the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. 



Hence I am inclined to believe, as has been suggested, by 

 Baldwin, that the seeds of this ancient civilization were brought 

 from the East Indian Archipelago, from island to island across 

 the Pacific, and that finally reaching our contment, and pre- 

 vented by the great and continuous chain of the Cordilleras 

 from further eastward migration, it slowly spread southward 

 to Chili and northward to our western Territories. 



March IGth, 1885. 

 Stated Meeting. 

 The President, Dr. J. S. Newberry, in the chau-. 

 A large audience assembled in the east lecture room of the 

 Library Building, Columbia College. 



