parochial church he receives the following disclosure on the purpose of the before-mentioned tools: “One day, when hearing mass in Mitla, I noticed an ancient picture, which represented (San.) Isidro, the patron of the laborers, and saw him painted holding in his right hand a pole armed with the problematic blade. I therefrom conclude, that like the ancient Indians, the native laborers of to-day have adopted this instrument as a distinctive mark of their profession, and that instead of being an instrument of death it must be viewed as one for giving life.” This explanation agrees satisfactorily with what could be inferred from its size and its peculiar shape, and if we imagine the tenon bent and in this form fastened to the top of a pole we should possibly have discovered a certain garden instrument of which the Spaniards spoke as always used by the natives, the _uictli_, or coa, hoe. It was never described in particular, nor could we discover it in the pictures, but Molina’s translation of _uictli_ with “_coa_” which is hoe, tells the story. There is still something more in this passage of Dupaix, that is worth considering. Among the 23 dozen of the instruments contained in the earthen pot, and of which he was informed that they were similar in shape to that which he had found, it is clear that there must have been a great number of very diminutive size; otherwise we cannot conceive how so many of them would have been placed in the pot, at all. Let us take advantage of this suggestion and suppose Dupaix’s engraving, cut 13, reduced to a diminutive size. We make thereby a little figure, and we cannot deny that it looks like a Greek _Tau_. Of such a _Greek Tau_, formed from copper, and used by the natives as money at the time of the Conquest mention is made by the chroniclers.[25] They may be right, but with the understanding that these copper pieces were not manufactured for the purpose of serving as coin, but as tools, which of course, came into market and became objects of barter, as we read the copper bells also did, besides grains of the cacao fruit, bales of cotton, axes and other articles of common necessity. Thus much, and no more, we were able to glean from the early literature of the Conquest and from the paintings of the natives. As we anticipated at the outset, the testimony bearing on copper industry among the early Mexicans is altogether incomplete and lacks that fulness of description in which those writers indulge when treating topics of social customs, religious rites, or monstrous idols. In but few instances the pictures gathered from the codices illustrate the dim suggestions and the doubtful wording of the Spanish text, so as to give at least a general idea of the localities where the copper ores were obtained, of the process of smelting, of the moulds that were used, and the objects or tools that were produced by these means.