Hundreds of distinct specimens may be gathered from glyptic work centuries before Christ, and so arranged as to form several genealogical trees. In Mythology there is not one single ancestor of all, as in the biblical history, where Adam is honored with being our original and only progenitor and equally censured with being the testator of our legacy of all human ills. The myriad bigamist ancestors of the countless mythological beings pictured on ancient gems have created and bequeathed to us numerous families of celestial and terrestrial divinities, denizens of earth, air, and water, and hundreds of grotesque chimeras. Like the royal families of our sphere, there was much intermarriage of close relatives, many of their offspring bearing at times the forms of animals, birds, and anon reptiles. Some of their descendants were even metamorphosed in those tropical climes into trees, under the cooling umbrage of which other scions were born and commenced their adventurous career. These poetical conceptions were the mythological forerunners of the simpler, purer, diviner religion which was eventually given to man. A close observer may find in these legendary myths antetypes of the omnipotent Godhead now revealed to us and in which is our sure hope and trust. [Illustration] CHINESE, BURMESE, AND SIAMESE. The Chinese are the only race producing glyptic work in relief on hard Jade, and also on stones resembling it--in which one is easily deceived. They are said to be good copyists: all designs given to them for reproduction are copied very closely, but in what we find on engraved stones there is the type of their nationality; it resembles nothing else. Their work is mostly in very low relief, on Nacre, Jade, Amethyst, and Agalmatolite. Their pictured stones generally represent hideous animals, birds, fruits, and views of paradise with figures of grotesque divinities. Their inscriptions are not deeply incised, but are usually letters or characters in their language in relief. The exquisitely beautiful details often exhibited by the Chinese are surprising, especially when we consider the hardness of the Jade, the material principally employed by them. What patience it must have required to cut those ornaments in Jade which we find on their scepters and on the handles of their official swords! Many pieces which are shown in museums have cost years of laborious engraving. Jade has therefore been esteemed by the Chinese as emblematic of all virtue. In this connection it may be remarked that the Burmese and the Siamese have seldom engraved on any stones harder than Alabaster or Agalmatolite (Chinese figure stone). Their subjects principally represent Buddha; occasionally his two feet; their emblematic flowers, and their deeply-revered sacred Bôdhi-tree at Gaya. [Illustration] SOMMERVILLE COLLECTION. [Illustration: 659] AZTEC. AZTEC OR MEXICAN.