176 REVIEWS. 
little less than that of feldspar.’ The fragments found were small, not 
~~ three-quarters of an inch in length and one-quarter of an inch 
ickness, and the material ‘appeared to have formed crusts upon the 
m dpa cavities or fissures in the rock, or to have aani through 
it in veins. 
Mr. Blake's description applies to the specimens exhibited to the Ly- 
ceum not long ago E Pro fessor Newberry, and there is no doubt that the 
ages. wa s, a variety of the turquoise. But I doubt if it 
e the true gee eo ud the Mexicans and Central Americans. That 
ud used the stone described by Mr. Blake for certain purposes, I know; 
Fig. 51. 
Chalchihuit] from Ocosingo. Two-thirds actual size. 
for there exists in the museum of the late Mr. Henry Christy, in London, 
a human skull completely encrusted with a mosaic of precisely this stone, 
€: a flint knife with its handle elaborately inlaid with it, in small frag- 
ments. Of the first of these relics I present a drawing made by Waldeck 
ex pubised by the oe Government. See Fria. 48.* 
T f eviden opinion, goes to show that the stone 
i ih Paco. s that -— Molina defines to be ‘ baja esme- 
ralda, or possibly nephrite, ‘a jasper of very green color,’ as Sahagun, 
already quoted, avers. I should ctore object, on strictly critical and 
historical grounds, to the suggestion of r. Blake, that the variety of 
turquoise found by him should be * known among mineralogists as chal- 
chihuitl.’ 
But apart from any speculations on the subject, I have to lay before the 
Lyceum a most interesting series of green stones, unrivalled, in their 
*In Mr. Christy’s i r, with turquoises, 
tempe and white and ‘red shells. The predominant — — sr is end rmi The bac 
of the skul e face to be 
hun -— by € 
ern: int (which still remain) over t the face of an nerd as was eri cu nM 
transverse black bands in the ent are of obsidian in the original. The essi are eere of 
iron pyrites, cut hemispherically and highly polished. 
Sa 
