80 MUSEUMS. 



Flint Arrow-head, with tanged stem, finely worked; and Flint Scraper; 

 found in an urn in a mound at Dunrugil, Wigtownshire. 



Piece of Breccia, coutaiuiiig numerous flint tlakes and bones, from 

 Palestine ; presented by the Piev. Canon H. B. Tristram, D.D., F.R.S. 



Part of a Terra-cotta Water Vessel, in the form of a human head ; 

 and nine glass beads, from graves at Chimbote, Peru ; collected and 

 presented by Mr. Martarell. 



Facsimile of the "Codice Messicana Vaticano," No. 3773; presented 

 by the Due de Loubat. 



For this, one of the most valuable of the gifts made to the Mayer 

 Museum during this year, we are indebted to the generous liberality of the 

 Duke of Lubat. This facsimile is one of a number of the ancient 

 Mexican Codices, executed at the expense of the Duke, who has for 

 many years taken the deepest interest in these Mexican Antiquities, 

 of which only a very few specimens have been preserved in some of the 

 richer libraries. The Mayer Museum is fortunate in possessing an 

 example of one of the finest originals of these books, which consist of 

 Ritual Calendars, Histories, and Tribute Rolls of the Ancient Mexicans, 

 written before the date of the discovery of America. The British Museum 

 and the Bodleian Library are, it is believed, the only Repositories in 

 England, besides the Mayer Museum, of examples of these treasures, and 

 on the Continent the chief are Paris, Rome, Dresden and Vienna. 



These codices are inscribed in hieroglj'phics on pages made of pieces 

 of deer skin of difterent sizes gummed together, having a white chalky 

 composition spread over them, on which the curious pictures are drawn 

 and paintsd in colours. To their interpretation we had, until recently, 

 almost no clue. In 1895 Senor Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, the 

 Director of the National Museum of Mexico — a well-known scholar and 

 authority on these documents — spent several weeks in studying and 

 elucidating the Mayer Codex, both in the Museum and at Oxford 

 University, where the Codex was, with the permission of the Committee, 

 lent to Senor Troncoso for several mouths for the purpose of enabling 

 him to compare it with the Codices in the Bodleian Library. In 

 recognition of the Committee's kindness Senor Troncoso gratuitously 

 used his influence with his friend, the Duke of Lubat, and induced him 

 to present a copy of the Vatican Codex 3773 to the Mayer Museum. 



The reproduction of this Codex is in absolute facsimile to the 



