510 The American Naturalist. [May, 
boxes of undressed slabs, after the manner of the stone graves of 
Tennessee, but oftenerin the open earth. If valuable trinkets of jade- 
ite or nephrite and vases painted with hieroglyphs are not to be found 
in these tombs, we should hardly know where to look for them. But 
Herr Maler says that few graves reward search. Of hieroglyphs on 
vases he had seen several specimens, and showed me one such incised 
inscription at his house. 
The mounds do not repay the explorer as they seem to promise. 
Instead of containing some tomb altar or enclosed chamber at 
their very centre, digging proves many of them to be heaps of loose 
boulders piled up for the purpose of erecting vaulted chambers on 
their sides and top. These ill-constructed structures have generally 
crumbled piecemeal into a loose talus that now forms the sides of the 
mounds, and the tumuli have become round, bramble-covered rubbish 
heaps, haunted by scorpions and garapatas. As a rule, with few excep- 
tions, there are no graves inside the typical mound, which contains 
three tiers or steps of the buildings in question, each with its plastered 
terrace. In the debris of the old floors of these rooms, many interesting 
fragments of pottery, sometimes showing religious symbolism, some- 
times imitating the forms of birds, monkeys and jaguars, have been 
found. 
Of monkeys, Herr Maler believes that there are two or three species 
in Yucatan. One small earthen monkey head, which he showed me, 
was truer to nature and less grotesque than other miniature human 
busts in his collection. Of these latter, one hideous face had been pre- 
sented to him by a Maya sorcerer at Bolon Chen, as a charm of great 
value. Obsidian flakes and flint knives, such as he showed me, were 
_ rare, since the modern Indians who found them, soon broke or lost 
them. The flint, of a creamy-white color, he had often found in the 
native state in swamps. Several earthen cloth stamps showed interest- 
ing curved designs, and two earthen whistles blew loud enough to have 
pleased a boatswain. Strange to say, he had but one arrowhead, but 
showed me several polished celts, probably of syenite or jadite, from 
_Chichen-Itza, Cozumel, and other places. They were somewhat worn on 
the cutting edges, but, in my opinion, could not have been used to 
carve limestone. 
Much light might be thrown on the history of the old inhabitants 
of Yucatan by a study of the modern Mayas, but Herr Maler supposed 
that the demonic beliefs and practices of the mystic brotherhood, known 
to students as Naguales, had faded away among the docile people of 
eastern Yucatan. The word Nagua, a familiar spirit in animal forms, 
is not used amongst them ; nevertheless, I suspect that i interesting results 
