The aborigines of Mexico and Central and South America employed terra-cotta color stamps, which, being made into the proper pattern in the soft clay, were burned hard; then, being first coated with color, the stamp was pressed upon the object to be decorated, and so transferred its color, as in the mechanical operation of printing, thus giving the intended decoration. Patterns of these stamps are inserted in this paper in connection with the Swastika because of the resemblance--not in form, but in style. They are of geometric form, crosses, dots, circles (concentric and otherwise), lozenges, chevrons, fret, and labyrinth or meander. The style of this decoration lends itself easily to the Swastika; and yet, with the variety of patterns contained in the series of stamps belonging to the U. S. National Museum, shown in figs. 337 to 342, no Swastika appears; nor in the similar stamps belonging to other collections, notably that of Mr. A. E. Douglass, in the Metropolitan Museum of Natural History, Central Park, New York, are any Swastikas shown. Of the foregoing figures, all are from Tlaltelolco, Mexico (Blake collection), except fig. 339, which is from the Valley of Mexico, and was received from the Museo Nacional of Mexico. [Illustration: Fig. 343. TERRA-COTTA COLOR STAMPS WITH DESIGNS SIMILAR TO THE SWASTIKA. Piaroa Indians, Venezuela. Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 982.] Marcano says:[304] The present Piaroas of Venezuela are in the habit of painting their bodies by a process different from that of the North American Indian. They make stamps of wood, which, being colored (as types are with ink), they apply to their bodies. Fig. 982 shows examples of these stamps. [See fig. 343 of the present paper.] The designs are substantially the same as some petroglyphs. They either copied the models they found carved on the rocks by peoples who preceded them, or they knew the meaning and preserved the tradition. The former is the only tenable hypothesis. Painting is to the Piaroas both ornamentation and necessity. It serves, not only as a garment to protect them against insects, but becomes a fancy costume to grace their feasts and meetings. These designs are not presented as Swastikas nor of any evolution or derivation from one. They show a style common enough to Central and South America, to the Antilles and the Canary Islands,[305] which might easily produce a Swastika. The aboriginal designer of these might, if we depend upon the theory of psychological similarity of culture among all peoples, at his next attempt make a Swastika. Yet, with the hundreds of similar patterns made during the centuries of aboriginal occupation and extending throughout the countries named, none of these seem ever to have produced a Swastika. V.--SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SWASTIKA.