METAL PRODUCTS. Large numbers of metallic artifacts have been found in the mounds of the eastern United States, in the cemeteries of the arid region. in the crypts of Mexico, and in the Imams of South America. The prevailing ma terial, especially in North America, is copper, evidently found native and wrought cold, or at low heat, with implements of stone, deer horn, (te. Most of the copper objects are implements evidently designed in imitation of stone celts, axes (tomahawks), spear-heads, knives, etc.; while many objects, usually wrought from sheets, were evidently decorative or ceremonial, some of the largest pieces from the mounds heing zoie images, or effigies, evidently of totemic charac ter. In the Pueblo region, and thence southward. through Mexico to Bolivia and Peru, silver and gold were used in considerable quantity, ordina rily for decorative or symbolic purposes; these metals, too, were undoubtedly found native, and wrought (usually) at low temperatures; but few interesting types of gold ornaments, de scribed by Holmes, were evidently produced by partial fusing of slender bars or wires, while some objects seem to have been produced by a sort of casting. in which the metal must have
been fused, at least to a moderately fluent con dition. Some of the mounds have yielded or namental pieces of iron, evidently of meteoric origin, and wrought cold or at low temperature: their preservation being due to the resistance of riderite to oxidation, and their shapement de pending on the fact that this material is "hot short," vet malleable at low temperatures, There are a few- examples (including one brought to light in the neighhorhond of Casa Grande, Arizo na, ill 1898) of the aboriginal use of heavy masses of iron; the Casa Grande specimen was a circu lar plate of fairly synunetrical form, some two feet in diameter, and nearly two inches in thick ness; the material was greatly oxidized and dis integrated, but bore some appearance of meteoric origin. On the whole, the metallic artifacts of prehistoric. America indicate that the aborigines never mastered and that most of their standards of metal-working were borrowed from their more characteristic stone craft.