520 The American Naturalist. [June, 
the surface with a pointed instrument and lined off for edge dressing 
with a flat edged tool, is shown as an interesting illustration (Fig. 1) of 
Fig. 1. Fragment of Stone from Chichen Itza, supposed to have been hewn 
by the ancient masons of Yucatan, the tools used are unknown, but we see the 
peckings of a pointed implement on the dressed side, and the long cuts of an 
edged tool along the upper margin. 
the effect on stone of the kind of tool we are hunting for. Until we find 
the implement, however, we may believe on early Spanish authority, that 
hard copper was used, or imagine adzes and chisels of stone as we please, 
while we recognize with Professor Holmes the importance of ransacking 
the sites of quarries, where the innumerable blocks (20,000 carved on 
the facade of the “Governors House”, at Uxmal alone) were pro- 
cured.” Happily chosen general observations give a clearness to the 
whole presentation, and the delightful yet confused and complex 
impression of the ruins left upon the mind by the accounts of 
travelers becomes simple in the colder light of Professor Holmes 
systematic observations. The reader continually thanks him as he 
would thank the compiler of an index to a work of many volumes. 
Such characteristic general features as the ignorance of a master 
principle of mason craft like joint binding, the feeble grasp of the 
* Captain Theobert Maler informed me in Ticul in 1895, that he had seen 
several such quarries, 
