June 23, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



963 



courtesies be extended to the commissioii 

 which it is customary to extend to other 

 judicial bodies and other international com- 

 mittees. Suggestions, advice and objective 

 arguments are welcomed, but polemics of all 

 kinds will be consigned, unconsidered and 

 unanswered, to the waste paper basket. 



This public notice is given only after re- 

 ceipt of a number of letters couched in terms 

 which it is exceedingly difficult to construe 

 as within the bounds of professional courtesy 

 or diplomatic usage. 



Ch. Waedell Stiles, 



Secretary 



THE ZOOLOGICAL RECORD 



The Zoological Record, published annually 

 by the Zoological Society of London, is now 

 also the zoological volume of the Interna- 

 tional Catalogue of Scientific Literature, and 

 is prepared with the active cooperation of the 

 United States government, through the 

 Smithsonian Institution. In spite of this, 

 when the volume for 1909 came to hand re- 

 cently, I was called upon to pay $2.50 duty, 

 a larger sum than ever before. I thereupon 

 applied to the Smithsonian Institution, and 

 was informed that the Record appeared to be 

 entitled to free entry, according to item 517 

 on page 11 of the Aldrich-Payne Tariff Bill 

 of 1909. Armed with this information, I 

 took up the matter with the U. S. Treasury, 

 and after a lengthy correspondence with the 

 authorities in Washington, New York and St. 

 Louis, have received a check for the amount 

 paid. I publish these facts for the informa- 

 tion of other subscribers. It should be added, 

 that not only is the Record entitled to free 

 entry, but all " books and publications issued 

 for their subscribers or exchanges by scientific 

 and literary associations or academies." 



T. D. A. COCKERELL 

 PRIMITIVE COPPER HARDENING 



To THE Editor of Science: In his notably 

 sane address on " The Lost Arts of Chem- 

 istry," ^ Dr. W. D. Richardson refers to the 

 question, much mooted among archeologists, 



'■ Science, Vol. XXXIII., 1911, p. 513 et seq. 



concerning the hardening of copper in primi- 

 tive art. While his general conclusion seems 

 just, it is nevertheless liable to be questioned 

 by collectors of primitive artifacts in this 

 country and perhaps elsewhere. Some per- 

 sonal investigation of primitive copper arti- 

 facts indicates that for two reasons these are 

 sometimes harder than is ordinarily attained 

 by modern artisans. (1) While ordinary 

 copper artifacts exhumed from mounds and 

 other burial places are commonly coated with 

 the green oxide, the edges of knives and some- 

 times other portions are patinated; and usu- 

 ally the patina (which may extend on both 

 sides of the blade quite to its edge) is de- 

 cidedly harder, albeit more brittle, than the 

 unchanged copper. Not infrequently this 

 patina is mistaken for the normal condition 

 of the metal; and the collector regards his 

 artifact as an evidence of artificial hardening 

 beyond the reach of modern artisans. (2) 

 Judging both from the condition of the pre- 

 historic artifacts and from the methods pur- 

 sued by primitive artisans, the copper imple- 

 ments of the American aborigines were com- 

 monly hardened by hammering, albeit rather 

 adventitiously than intentionally. Now, in 

 the process of working, the tools employed 

 (corresponding to hammer and anvil) were 

 not of steel or other resilient metal, but of 

 stone; and experiment indicates that under 

 the blows of an inelastic stone hammer on a 

 thin blade resting on an inelastic stone anvil, 

 the successive impacts are not so well dis- 

 tributed throughout the mass of the metal as 

 are those produced by resilient steel tools; so 

 that the blade undergoes a sort of skin-hard- 

 ening, naturally culminating in the cutting 

 edge.. Of course this effect might easily be 

 imitated by a modern artisan using primitive 

 tools ; yet it is a factor to be reckoned with in 

 considering the widespread belief in the su- 

 perior hardness of primitive copper artifacts. 

 Speaking broadly, the notion of lost arts, 

 which Dr. Eichardson effectively combats, is 

 a mischievous one. Of course throughout the 

 long, devious and vacillating course of human 

 progress, arts have disappeared — usually be- 

 cause replaced by superior arts. The indus- 



