of
Mexico, and was sold to an English collector, at whose death it passed
into the hands of E. Boban, of Paris, and then became the property of
Mr. Sisson. That such large worked objects of rock crystal are not
found in Mexico might lead one to infer its possible Chinese or
Japanese origin. But it is evident that the workmanship of the skull is
not Chinese or Japanese, or nature would have been more closely copied;
and if the work were of European origin, it would undoubtedly have been
more carefully finished in some minor details. Prof. Edward S. Morse of
Salem, Mass., who resided in Japan for several years, and Tatui Baba of
Japan, now of New York City, state positively that this skull is not of
Japanese origin. Mr. Baba gives as one reason for his belief that the
Japanese would never cut such an object as a skull from so precious a
material. In ancient Mexico there was undoubtedly a veneration for
skulls, for we find not only small skulls of rock crystal, but real
skulls, notably the one in the Christy Collection in the British
Museum, incrusted with turquoise, and it may have been one of these
that suggested the making of this skull, the one at the Trocadero
Museum, and the smaller one. Two very interesting crescents are known,
the one in the Trocadero Museum (see Fig. 15), the other in the
collection of Dr. Maxwell Sommerville, in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York City. Beads of this material are sometimes found in the
tombs with jadeite and other stone beads. They rarely have a diameter
of an inch.
Rock
crystal in large masses has been reported from near Pachuca, Hidalgo,
in the State of Michoacan, and in veins near La Paz in Lower
California; the center of the vein is said to be beautifully pellucid,
but the sides are opaque white. It is not known whether the rock
crystal used by the aborigines was obtained at a Mexican locality, or
whether it came from Calaveras County, Cal., where masses of rock
crystal are found con-
