The pottery of the Huaxtec (Figs. 42–44) is peculiar from more than one point of view. The paste of the most characteristic specimens is hard and well-fired, of a pale cream colour, and the most typical shape is a handled vase with a spout, rather like a teapot (Fig. 42), with moulded and painted ornament, in red and black, on the body. The latter is frequently in the form of an animal, with a large human face modelled upon its back near the tail. Other vases in human shape, with a spouted handle and similar painted decoration were also moulded from this pale clay (Fig. 43). The presence of a spout distinguishes Huaxtec pottery from Mexican, though an appendage of this nature is not unknown from the Totonac country, since the tail of the animal vase figured on Pl. XIX is pierced by a hole. Red pottery is also found in the Huaxtec country, in the form of large vases and smaller tripod bowls, often with engraved ornament on the outer surface. Grater-bowls, similar in pattern to those of the Mexican valley, but in the pale cream ware, are also found, together with many figurines and fragments of such which are not mould-made. [Illustration: FIG. 42.--Huaxtec pottery vase; Tanquian. (_After Seler_)] [Illustration: FIG. 43.--Huaxtec pottery vase; Panuco. (_After Seler_)] To speak generally, the earliest type of pottery of which we have cognizance is similar in type to that manufactured later by the Tarascans. Following this came the far finer ware characteristic of Teotihuacan, the product of the Toltec culture. In pottery-making the mantle of the Toltec seems to have fallen upon the people of Cholula and Tlaxcala, districts associated with them in legend, and upon the Totonac, whose art shows certain affinities with that of Cholula. Between the ware of the Cholula-Tlaxcala region and that of the Mixtec-Zapotec district considerable similarity exists, a similarity which extends to the decoration of the pyramid of Xochicalco. It is usually held that the Cholulan style penetrated into Oaxaca _via_ Teotitlan, but I do not feel certain that the reverse may not be truer, and that the real home of the highly-burnished polychrome ware may not eventually be found to lie in Oaxaca. The form of ornament does not seem to be a direct descendant of the Teotihuacan art, and there are found in the Oaxaca region certain original forms, such as the “Peruvian” designs mentioned above, as well as a tendency to elaborate textile motives as ornament (for instance, the wall-mosaics of Mitla), many of which motives constantly recur in the decoration of vases in the “Cholula” style, while they are wanting on the Teotihuacan pottery. However that may be, Teotitlan is a site of great importance, constituting as it does a meeting-point of the three best schools of pottery, Cholula, Oaxaca and Totonac. Further consideration of the questions involved in the study of Mexican pottery must be deferred