508 The American Naturalist. [May, 
taking. No less should acknowledgement be made to Dr. S. Weir 
Mitchell for advice and assistance in the outfit. Important coopera- 
tive aid has been furnished by Dr. William Pepper, President of the 
Association, by Dr. D. G. Brinton and Professor E. D. Cope ; while the 
expedition owes its choice of the Sierra de Yucatan to the geographical 
help given it by Professor Angelo Heilprin, of the Academy of Nat- 
ural Sciences of Philadelphia. 
Certain notes, taken upon the journey, and not bearing directly 
upon the results of the work, may interest students. They recall an 
interesting conversation at Ticul, in February, with Herr Maler, the 
archeologist, who, coming to Mexico with the French expedition, has 
remained in Yucatan as a student of its antiquities, ever since. 
Nothing, next to the stone work of the ruins themselves, so strikes 
the explorer in the peninsula as the remarkable predominance of pot- 
tery over all other relics of human handiwork. Herr Maler believes 
that much of the craft of the old earthenware might be relearned and 
recovered by a study of the work of the present Indian potters. Some 
of the pots were, he supposed, baked over the constricted calabash, 
now used as a water bottle, but on none were noticed traces of the pot- 
ter's wheel. Pottery is found everywhere, but no hunting grounds 
have proved so rich as the Chultun, artificial, clock-shaped cisterns, 
built by the ancient Mayas, for catching rain-water. He who is stag- 
gered at the task of searching for sites of habitation in the stony, 
thorny, insect-haunted jungles, saves labor by climbing down into these 
round holes, so often seen in the woods and near mounds, now dry in- 
side. When not repaired for modern use, their plastered floors gener- 
ally contain two or more feet of rubbish, whence come many of the 
perfect vases, cups and jars which leave Yucatan. Chief among 
these is the wide-necked water jar, miniature models of which are some- 
times found in the debris; the latter being probably playthings drop- 
ped by children into the cistern, and there lost beyond easy recovery 
in the deep water. 
But the ruins themselves, by all means the most conspicuous relics 
of the past in Yucatan, visited and studied, perhaps, to exclusion of 
almost everything else, suggest a puzzling question which yet defies 
answer: How were the stones cut which surprise us by the richness of 
their ornament? Were the tools used random masses of similar ma- 
terial—chips of the old block, lavishly used to cut the parent stone? 
Were they the pitted hammer-stones of Mr. MeGuire’s theory, or chisels 
made of a harder rock? Were they implements of copper? What- 
éver any or all of them were, none of them have been discovered in 
