Let us further ascertain, what Father Sahagun[20] is able to tell us about Mexican metal tools. As a teacher of the young native generation, he made it his life’s task to teach his pupils all that concerned the religious belief, the history and the industry of their forefathers. We extract from Lib. 10, Cap. 7, the following passages and translate them as literally as possible: “The goldsmith is an expert in the selection of good metal. He knows how to make of it whatever he likes and does it with skill and elegance. He is conversant with all kinds of devices, and all this he does with composure and accuracy. (_Con medida y compas_). He knows how to purify the ore, and makes plates of silver as well as of gold from the cast metal. He knows likewise how to make moulds of carbon (_moldes de carbon_), and how to put the metal into the fire in order to smelt it. The unskilful goldsmith does not know how to purify the silver, he leaves it mixed up with the ashes, and has his sly ways in taking and stealing something of the silver.” Further on in Cap. 24: “he who is a trader in needles (_agujas_), casts, cleans, and, polishes them well; he makes also bells (_cascabeles_), filters (_aguijillos_), punches (_punzones_), nails (_clavos_), axes (_hachas_), hatchets (_destrales_), cooper’s adzes (_azuelas_), and chisels (_escoplos_).” In these two passages is summed up all that we sought to gather piecewise from the writers of the Conquest, on our special question. A few new features, however, are cropping out in this enumeration of implements, which give rise to the suspicion, that the goldsmith is described, not as he worked before the year 1521, but as he had perfected himself and enlarged his technical knowledge through the intervention of Spanish mechanics, in the year of Sahagun’s writing, about 1550. We mean the moulds of carbon, the nails,[21] and the cooper’s adze, of which we read in Sahagun exclusively, and of which no pictures or other evidences of their ante-Spanish existence have been preserved. Pictures of needles frequently occur in the Mexican paintings. But it is understood that they are without an eye, the introduction of our sewing needle having been an actual revelation to the natives. The head of a Mexican needle, or rather pin, was full, and split like that of an animal’s bone. The borer, certainly, had no handle or spiral point. Of all these stitching, piercing and drilling instruments nothing has been preserved, in kind. [Illustration: CUT 9. Copper Chisel found in Oaxaca. ]