292 



NATURE 



[January 25, 1900 



many also occur in shallower water. A supposed Doclca 

 stands alooe as a true shallow-water species captured at 

 the hundred fathom line. 



The list reveals a predominance of Oxystomid and 

 Oxyrhynchid forms, and the careful diagnoses which 

 comprise the bulk of the report are illustrated by four 

 exquisite plates, drawn by the native artists who so fully 

 distinguished themselves in the delineation of the corals. 

 For accuracy and beauty of execution they would be 

 difficult to surpass, and it afifords us great pleasure to 

 add that in the coUotyping process employed by Messrs. 

 Taylor and Francis, who have reproduced these draw- 

 ings, nothing has apparently been depreciated or lost. 

 The result is an entirely new departure in English art 

 work, full of promise for the future. In dealing with the 

 higher Crustacea Dr. Alcock is on his strongest ground, 

 for his " Materials for a Carcinological Fauna" is already 

 an established work of cyclopaedic importance. The 

 result of the present undertaking is a triumph for those 

 concerned, the tout ensemble a memorable one, and as 

 a final comment upon it we can only add that Dr. 

 Alcock has incurred yet another contribution to the debt 

 of gratitude due to him by zoologists at large. 



ANTIQUITIES OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 

 A Glimpse at Guatemala and Some Notes on the Ancient 

 Monuments of Central America. By Anne Carey 

 Maudslayand Alfred Percival Maudslay. With Maps, 

 Plans, Photographs, and other Illustrations. Pp- 

 xvii -f 289. (London : Murray, 1899.) 



FOR the last two decades the name of Mr. A. P. 

 Maudslay has been the most conspicuous of those 

 associated with archceological work in Central America. 

 No other explorer, not even excepting Mr. Stephens 

 himself, has covered so much ground and obtained such 

 valuable results in this wide field of research. Since 

 1 88 1 he has spent many years amid the ruined cities of 

 Guatemala, Yucatan, and Honduras, has studied the 

 monuments in minute detail, taken innumerable draw- 

 ings and castings of carvings and inscriptions, drawn 

 elaborate ground plans of palaces and temples from 

 which the rank vegetable growths had first to be cleared. 

 On the main and special features of these crumbling 

 remains he has published several copious monographs 

 in the Geographical Journal and elsewhere, and is now 

 giving to the world the results of his seven expeditions 

 in the Biologia Centrali- Americana., of which eight parts, 

 with no less than 200 plates, have already been issued. 



When, therefore, this sumptuous volume was an- 

 nounced, specialists and other close students of American 

 antiquities looked forward to a great banquet spread out 

 with a view to their particular tastes and expectations. 

 In this respect they will certainly be somewhat dis- 

 appointed, while the general public will be all the more 

 charmed with a book of travels which is written in a 

 fascinating style, and in which the note of living human 

 interest is stronger than that of a vanished past. The 

 book is exactly what it professes to be— a brightly 

 written account of a final visit paid in 1894 to the scene 

 of his long and fruitful labours, the main object being 

 to take a general look round, and give in a small com- 

 NO. 1578, VOL. 61] 



pass a rough idea of the vast amount of work which has 

 been accomplished, and will be permanently recorded 

 in the more costly and less accessible volumes of the 

 Biologia. 



During this last survey Mr. Maudslay was accom- 

 panied by his wife ; and the arrangement by which the 

 lighter and more descriptive sections were entrusted to 

 her skilful pen has been attended with the happiest re- 

 sults. Besides some very searching " glimpses " at the 

 country, its scenery, vegetable and animal life, and 

 present inhabitants, special visits were paid to Coban, 

 Rabinal, Copan,Quiregua, Ixkun, Chichen Itza, Palenque, 

 and Tikdl, and some further archaeological work carried 

 out at several of these places. Special chapters written 

 by Mr. Maudslay are devoted to such work, while Mrs. 

 Maudslay takes charge of the incidents of travel, house- 

 hold matters, the surroundings, attitude of the natives, 

 and so forth. Some of her pictures are extremely 

 graphic, as when she enters sympathetically into the bird 

 life, and tells us how 



" we shared our dining room with the birds, who came in 

 flocks to feed on the ficus and other fruit-bearing trees, 

 and we were never weary of watching them at play 

 amongst the branches overhead. At first the parrots 

 and parroquets vastly outnumbered all the others, and 

 appeared to have formed a settlement in the tree above 

 our tent. These parrots were a boisterous family, who 

 woke at dawn, and began screaming and chattering 

 whilst they performed round the branches all those 

 gymnastic feats which I have thought were only devised 

 in captivity to vary the monotony of cage-life. But the 

 parroquets, who lived in the same tree, appeared to be 

 quiet little creatures, who nestled near to one another, 

 whispering and cooing gently, until some sudden impulse 

 would seize both parties, and they would dash off in the 

 air, flashing circles of gold and red and green as the 

 sun caught the glint of their plumage, and then return as 

 suddenly to the shelter of the trees to chatter loudly over 

 their exploits." 



While all this is going on, Mr. Maudslay is busy amid 

 the neighbouring ruins on the banks of the Copan, 

 which he had first surveyed in 1881, and studied more 

 carefully in 1885. Here was revealed the fine ornamental 

 doorway of a temple, and here the important discovery 

 was made that nearly all the truncated pyramidal mounds 

 had been crowned by temples, thus bringing these 

 monuments, like those of Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and 

 so many others in Yucatan, in line with Cholula, Teoti- 

 huacan, Papantla, and the one or two other extant 

 Mexican teocalli. The genesis of all is the same — 

 mounds raised above the remains of departed chiefs, and 

 terminating, not with a point as in Egypt, but with a 

 platform on which to perform sacrificial rites and build 

 the teocalli (" God's House "), when in due course the 

 great chief joined the Clympians. But were these struc- 

 tures built by the same race, and, if so, by whom ? In a 

 chapter on " Conclusions" Mr. Maudslay discusses this 

 vexed question in connection with the obscure relations 

 of Toltecs, Nahuas, and Mayas, and infers that the 

 Toltecs were not of Aztec (Nahua) but of Maya stock. 

 He, however, speaks with uncertain voice, and still 

 doubts whether the stream of migration set from Mexico 

 southwards or from Central America northwards. But the 

 problem may now be regarded as solved in favour of the 

 first assumption ; and if Mr. Maudslay hesitates, it is only 



