A state battle-axe in the Christy collection made of green quartzose avanturine, measures 11 inches in length. It is a thick wedge, with the upper part carved as the head of a Mexican idol or king, and the arms outlined on the blade. Jade, green serpentine, grey granite, agate, and obsidian of different colours, were all worked into various shapes for ornament or use, with a care often prompted by the attractive character of the material, and with a skill no longer known to the native Mexican artificers. [Illustration: FIG. 60.—Honduras serrated Implement.] In the southern continent also examples of mastery in the manufacture of flint and stone implements survive, in some cases as the sole memorials of races which have perished; and traces of the arts of savage tribes in the primitive condition of a purely stone-period lie everywhere outside of the remarkable centres of Peruvian civilisation. Three such relics from the Bay of Honduras are deserving of special notice, from their unusually large size and peculiar forms. They were found, along with other implements, about the year 1794, in a cave between two and three miles inland. One of them is now preserved in the British Museum, and the others have been repeatedly exhibited at meetings of the Archæological Institute. The accompanying illustrations will best convey an idea of their peculiar forms. One (Fig. 60) is a serrated weapon, pointed at both ends, and measuring sixteen and a half inches long. Another (Fig. 61), in the form of a crescent, with projecting points, measuring 17 inches in greatest length, may have served as a weapon of parade, like the state partisan or halberd of later times. The third, which is imperfect, is shown in Fig. 62. The whole are examples of flint implements of unusually large proportions, and chipped with extraordinary regularity and skill. A well-executed head of a warrior, in terra-cotta, obtained about the same period, if not indeed along with these implements, was presented to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1798, and is figured on a subsequent page. The unwonted size of those Honduras implements attracted special notice when first produced; but this ceases to excite surprise when it is seen that blocks of flint or hornstone adequate for the largest of them are readily procurable throughout extensive regions of North America, as in Ohio and Kentucky. To the north of Ohio, where the material is rare, flint implements and weapons are mostly of small size. The larger implements are of stone; and among the Iroquois, the Hurons, the Chippewas, and other tribes on the shores of the great lakes, the copper of Lake Superior seems to have been recognised, and sought for, as a fitter material for large hatchets and spear-heads. [Illustration: FIG. 61.—Honduras State Halberd.] [Illustration: FIG. 62.—Honduras Implement.]