July 23, 1896] 



NATURE 



275 



is a matter of the highest interest to students of American 

 arch;tology. . 



1 trust that in a future publication Mr. Hohnes will 

 give us a drawing of the whole of the inscription on this 

 stela, as only a portion of it is shown in the photograph. 



After a glance at Izamal the travellers went on to 

 Chichcn Itza, where they remained for a week. As I was 

 myself encamped for five months at Chichen Itza 

 in 1889, engaged in clearing and examining the ruins, 

 I am well able to appreciate the great extent and excel- 

 lence of the work accomplished by Mr. Holmes during 

 the short time at his disposal. The property on which 

 the ruins stand has recently passed into the possession 

 of Mr. E. H. Thompson, formerly United States Consul 

 in Merida, who has for many years been an ardent student 

 of Maya arch;vology, and amongst other work has made 

 an exhaustive examination of the ruins of Labnd for the 

 Peabody Institute at Harvard. Now that Mr. Thompson 

 is resident at Chichen, we may look forward to many 

 interesting discoveries by one who has had such long 

 experience in the field. 



I can only express my regret that at the time of his 

 visit Mr. Holmes had not yet received copies of my 

 plans and photographs (the first portion of which has 

 been published in the Bio/oi;!tt Ccntrali Americana, 

 vol iii.), as his corrections and criticisms made on the 

 spot would have been of the utmost value. 



Mr. Holmes's work has been so well done, and must 

 be so acceptable to all students of the subject, that I have 

 some fear that it may seem almost ungracious on my 

 part to note what appear to me some few errors which 

 my longer residence in the ruins enable me to detect. 



On p. 114, the mutilated figures in the niches on 

 either side of the mask over the doorway of the " Iglesia " 

 are not human figures, but apparently humanised animals, 

 one being a turtle and another an alligator. 



On pp. 1 1 6- 1 1 7, the curious round tower known as 

 the " Caracol," is figured and described as symmetrically 

 placed on its double terraces ; but I found the upper 

 terrace to be curiously uneven, and unsymmetrically placed 

 on the lower one. 



On p. 119, Mr. Holmes states: "The exterior con- 

 formation of this strange tower can be made out in part 

 only. The lower wall is of ordinary masonry, finished 

 in plaster, and broken only by the four entrances. It rises 

 nine or ten feet to the base of the formidable, five- 

 membered moulding, which projects two feet from the 

 wall face and is five feet in width, being the only example 

 of its kind in Yucatan. The upper margin is opposite 

 the middle of the arch slope within, as seen in the sec- 

 tion. The masonry at this level is four feet thick. 



" In studying this part of the building the very inter- 

 esting question arose as to whether the exterior wall 

 surface above this moulding rose vertically or whether it 

 sloped inwards toward the upper turret. I had the good 

 fortune to find one vertical stone, representing the first 

 course above the moulding, in place, and this I regard as 

 conclusive proof that the upper wall-zone was vertical. 

 This conclusion is confirmed by the fact that in all cases 

 in Yucatan and Chiapas, so far as I have observed, where 

 the upper mural zone slopes, it includes with it in the 

 slope not only all the courses above the medial mouldings, 

 but the medial mouldings themselves, whereas in this 

 case the mouldings are vertical." This conclusion 

 is of considerable importance, and shows that I have 

 fallen into an error in my figuring of the upper part of 

 the Caracol {Biol. Centr. Am., vol. iii. plate 20), and 

 makes me regret all the more that my plans and 

 photographs were not in Mr. Holmes's hands when 

 he was at Chichen. 



On p. 124, in describing the "Castillo," Mr. Holmes 

 suggests that the balustrades of all four stairways ended 

 in serpents' heads ; but this is the case in the northern 



NO. 1395, VOL. 54J 



stairway only. I moved many tons of earth and stones 

 in order to uncover the base of the western stairway, and 

 found the end of the balustrade to be without any orna- 

 ment whatever. I cannot agree with Mr. Holmes in the 

 assumption that the corners of the pyramidal foundation 

 were ornamented with great serpents' bodies " following 

 in and out the nine-terraced steps." The structure of the 



rounded corners of the pyramid can be fairly well made 

 out at the north-east angle ; but in all probaljility it was 

 thickly overgrown, and so escaped notice. 



In describing the portal of the Castillo, and the 

 portal of the temple on the wall of the Ball Court 

 (the temple of the Tigres), Mr. Holmes has just failed 

 to catch the full structure of the serpent columns. These 



columns are markedly characteristic of Chichen Itzd, and 

 the portals of no less than six of the temples were sup- 

 ported by them. One is figured in the frontispiece 

 (Plate i), and again in the sections of the Castillo and of 

 the Ball Court temple. The figure here reproduced («) 

 is from the section of the Castillo (p. 123). The more 

 correct drawing would be as in (/;}, the projection from 



