All these questions are of the highest interest, and claim an answer. Our most renowned authorities for Mexican archæology and history, Humboldt, Prescott and Brasseur de Bourbourg,[1] pass over this subject without giving any desired satisfaction. They do not go much farther than to repeat the statements furnished by the writers in the same language as they received them. These early statements will form the principal portion of the material out of which we weave the text of our discussion. In order that the reader may be better prepared to enter into our reasoning and judge of the correctness of our conclusions, we shall, in translation, place the statements of these authors below the text, in the form of foot-notes; though, in cases where it is believed that the reader may desire to see the originals, the Spanish text is given. Considerable help has been derived from a source hitherto very little consulted, that of the native paintings, which represent copper implements. As will be seen, they make up, to a certain extent, for the deficiency of the latter in collections. The cuts we give are of the same size as those we find copied in the Kingsborough Collection. We shall speak first of those localities whence the natives procured their copper and their tin; secondly, of the manner in which they used to melt metals; thirdly, consider whether the metal was moulded or hammered; and fourthly, discuss the various forms into which their tools appear to have been shaped. That the natives of the New World collected and worked other metals besides gold and silver, seems to have become known to the Spaniards only after their entrance into the city of Mexico, A.D. 1521. During the first epoch, in which the West India Islands and the Atlantic coasts of South and Central America were explored and conquered, no specimen of utensils, tools or weapons, made of brass or copper, was discovered to be in the possession of the inhabitants. So also in Yucatan, Tlascalla, and on the high plateau of Anahuac, where mechanics and industry were found to have a home, and where the native warrior exhibited his person in the most gorgeous military attire, their swords, javelins, lances and arrows, showed that concerning the manufacture of arms they had, so to speak, not yet emerged from the Stone-Age. And finally, when brass, copper, tin, and even lead, were seen exposed for sale in the stalls of the market-place of Mexico, it was noticed to the great astonishment of the conquerors, that these metals had exclusively served the natives for the manufacture of mere instruments of peace.