In working stone, stone tools were alone employed, copper being quite unsuitable for the purpose. Of smaller works of art attention may be called to the specimens shown in Pl. XI, 3 and 4, which are carved in jadeite or some analogous material. The small seated figures in Fig. 22, and the carved plate in Pl. XI, 4, are particularly characteristic of Oaxaca. Fine alabaster vases were manufactured, especially in the Totonac country around Vera Cruz, the interiors being laboriously drilled out by means of a tubular drill, probably of bone or bamboo, a practice also followed by ancient Egyptian lapidaries. Small mirrors, with a convex surface to reduce the image, were made from nodules of pyrites, and beads and pendants of all descriptions manufactured from jadeite and other translucent stones. Fine green jadeite, called chalchiuitl, was highly prized, and its use was allowed only to persons of high rank. Ornaments of this material were given by Montecuzoma to Cortés for transmission to the Emperor, and Diaz quotes his words as follows: “I will also give you some very valuable stones ... chalchihuites ... not to be given to anyone else, but only to him, your great Prince.” Bead necklaces of this stone formed an important item of tribute from certain subject cities (Fig. 18, _c_; p. 118). In producing the smaller works of art from crystal, jadeite and amethyst, flint, and sometimes copper, points were used for engraving and drilling, emery was employed in rubbing down, and small articles were set in wood for polishing. Heliotrope, being very hard, was set in stone. The stone-workers of Xochimilco and Tenayocan enjoyed a particularly high reputation. The most gorgeous works of the lapidary’s art were the mosaics, of which two are shown on Pls. =I= and =XVIII=, 1. In the first, fragments of turquoise and jet are laid in a resinous matrix on a human skull; the eyes are pyrites encircled with shell rings, and the nose is inlaid with plates of pink shell (pink shells also formed an article of tribute, see Fig. 18, _e_; p. 118). Some of the teeth have been reset in their wrong places. The knife-handle is similarly incrusted with turquoise, malachite and shell. Masks of the gods, head-pieces and ornaments were made in the same materials on wood foundations, and the masks of Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc and Tezcatlipoca were among the articles sent by Cortés to the Emperor Charles. The Tarascans were especially famed as mosaic workers, and the art extended right up into Arizona, though not in such perfection. It is thought that the turquoise itself passed in trade southwards from the deposits at Los Cerrillos in New Mexico. The Toltec were reputed to have been particularly skilful lapidaries, and to have possessed peculiar powers in the way of discovering deposits of precious stones. For this purpose, so it was said, they would take up their position on some elevated spot just before dawn, and at the