Another find of some importance made to-day is one of the three feet of a cup (molcazete), covered with the remains of its enamel. It belongs to the same class as the cups found at Tenenepanco, of which I have spoken so enthusiastically. The blue, black, green, and yellow painted on the pottery still remain, after being buried for a thousand years.

The excavations at the site of the oratorio have yielded no results of any moment, and will cease to-morrow. We will then begin to dig at the site of a temple. The rains interfere seriously with our labors.

On coming from their work, my men brought me the neck of a glass vase! It is iridized like all glass that has been buried for a long time in the ground. On this subject I make no comments, yet I will add that nations are like individuals: they always esteem themselves to be more highly civilized than their predecessors. The Chinese, the Hindoos, the Egyptians, have left to us evidences of their genius; they understood the making of glass and of porcelain, and many other arts before we did, and to me, it is no matter of surprise that an intelligent population such as the Toltecs should have been able to erect monuments, to cut stone, to make porcelain, to invent enamel, and to manufacture glass.

Before we have done with the ruins of the Toltec habitation, we must consider briefly the question, Whence came the objects found therein? Did they come from the inhabitants themselves, or do they belong to a later date?

In a well-ordered house, such as the great house in question must have been, the inmates would never allow the bones of the animals used for food to remain in the apartments; neither would they allow the fragments of pottery or the waste of the kitchen to accumulate. The poorest and the filthiest among the Indians throw their garbage outside of their huts, and of course the lordly proprietors of a palace could not do less. Hence the refuse found in these ruined apartments belonged to other populations, or else it was the accumulation of the last few days of the unfortunate inmates before they took their departure.

August 26th.-The day was spent in clearing the ground at the site of the temple, cutting down the trees.

August 27th, 28th.-I was in error in supposing this mound to be a pyramid, and that its purpose was to support a temple. On the first day of excavation here we brought to light four chambers, and I now find myself in presence of a Toltec habitation more im

portant than the first one. I call this dwelling a palace, because it is much larger than the other one, stands on a pyramid, and has two wings inclosing a courtyard. The walls are thicker than those of the first habitation, and more strongly built. The apartments, too, are larger, though arranged in similar fashion. As in the other, we found here fragments of porcelain and of delf and glazed terracotta. The delf is plainly of Indian manufacture. Six other rooms were cleared of débris on the second day.

September 5th.-I have just returned from the city of Mexico, whither I went to defend an action at law brought against me by the owner of the ground on which the excavations were going forward. The difference was adjusted amicably. On my return I found the work well advanced, yet not so near completion as I expected. The building is very large, and about one half of it still remains to be uncovered. I have now thirty-five men at work. The objects found are comparatively few-broken pottery, carvings broken and worn, and three pieces of cut stone forming an arch. The arch is small, and would appear to have stood over a doorway. I found a piece of delf brilliantly colored in blue, yellow, green, etc.

We have cleared thirty apartments of various dimensions. I am beginning to think that the corridors were not roofed, but that they served to light this labyrinth of chambers.

September 6th, 7th.-We have discovered a spiral stairway leading from the lower apartments to the upper ones. This stairway is of cut stone, and is well preserved.

September 8th.-Five men were added to-day to the force at work, making the number now employed forty. There is an enormous amount of work done and yet to be done, and the plan of this dwelling, which I will draw when the excavation is completed, will show what a magnificent edifice I have discovered. The fame of our discoveries has gone out, and we are overrun with visitors, each one desirous of taking away some memento. I am compelled to be very stern in my dealings with these people.

September 9th.-Still the same objects found-broken idols, fragments of delf, a stamp, and a piece of terra-cotta, with ornaments that are strictly Indian in character.

As I said in the note prefixed to the first of this series of papers, they are simply the impression of each day-an impression that is subject to modification at any moment by some new "find." Now to-day, though I am no zoologist, I can not but recognize, among the many bones found in the progress of the work, jawbones of

swine, sheep, and, as I believe, of oxen and horses. Add to these pieces of plates of coarse delf-that can only have come from the Spaniards-and the inference is unavoidable that the latter inhabited the ruins of Tula in the early days of the conquest, and that they have left us, mixed with Indian mementos, the tokens of their presence here.

This in no wise lessens the interest attaching to these ruins, only we have to distinguish between the relics, and to render to each that which to each belongs.

In any event, the work we have done is an important one. The palace we have unearthed covers a surface of one hundred and sixty-five square feet, and we have had to excavate and carry to a considerable distance three or four thousand cubic yards of soil.

One thing that leads me to think that these edifices have been inhabited by others besides their builders is the fact that, on examining them closely, we discover modifications of the original planhere a passage blocked, there an annex that seems to be at variance with the whole plan of the building.

The palace included at least forty-three apartments, large and small. In a few days I will draw the plan, and give the heights of the walls. It will be seen that these buildings at Tula are totally different from any before known.

On my return to the city of Mexico, Señor del Cartillo, Professor of Zoology in the School of Mines, on examining the bones of animals found at Tula, pronounced them to be the remains of Bos Americanus, horse, Andes sheep, llama, stag, etc., and fossil! If his judgment is confirmed by that of the savants of Paris and the Smithsonian Institution, a new horizon is opened for the history of man in America. My victory will then be complete, as I shall have brought to light a new people, and a city unique in its origi nality, and shall have opened to the learned a new branch of natural history. Surely this were enough to satisfy the most ambitious investigator.

DESIRE CHARNAY.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.

FROM time to time during the last twenty years there have appeared articles in the public prints which indicated an awakening and growing interest in the practicability of having wide sections of our country transact its business and govern its social duties by a common time. Within the last few years official reports from various observatories, departments of the Government, scientific societies, and the telegraph companies, have shown so considerable a progress in the introduction of uniform systems of time, and these systems have been so cordially received by the communities interested, that there can be no doubt that the country is ready to be divided into a few great sections, each of which shall be governed by its own standard, which shall bear some simple relation to the standards governing the neighboring sections.

The principal systems now in operation comprise the United States Naval Observatory system, which extends its distribution of Washington time to Chicago and the West; the Harvard and Yale systems, which distribute, respectively, Boston and New York time over New England; the Alleghany Observatory system, which is concerned chiefly with the Pennsylvania Railroad; and the more local services emanating from the observatories at Albany, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. Unfortunately, except in New England, the distribution of the time of an observatory has not always resulted in the adoption of that time for general use, and it is often the case that the local jewelers who are the guardians of townclocks, and local time as well, will convert the time received by telegraph into their own local time, and thus make it inconveniently different from the time in use in any other city of their region.

A railroad may or may not secure the adoption of its own time in the cities along its route. It is generally a question as to which is the most important, the railroad or the town. But certain it is that there is not an important railroad in the country, outside of New

England, along which the commercial traveler may go without having to compute the discrepancy between his watch and the time kept by the business men at one half the stopping-places. Thus it happens that, even where cities are closely connected by large railroads, the people have been dictated to by their jewelers regarding their standard of time, when a little reflection shows that there is only a very questionable advantage arising from having a local time simply because the jewelers of the city insist on a time which shall appeal to the local pride of their customers.

On the other hand, the disadvantage of having the factory operatives begin work on railroad time and stop on local time, because they gain ten minutes a day by that sharp practice; the jostle and inconvenience in the commercial interchange between two neighboring cities, because the stock-exchanges, business offices and the banks, close with a difference of ten minutes; the thousand engagements broken by the discrepancies of time-all indicate the need of the adoption of such a common time as already exists in the European countries.

The writer has always felt that the railroads ought to be the most influential means in securing uniformity. They can be successfully appealed to for the financial support which any accurate system demands, because they have a direct and strong interest in the use of the same time at every office and by every employee of their roads. The superintendents, too, with whom the decision of such matters generally rests, are keenly alive to anything which lessens the risk of accident, and they at once appreciate the advantage of having the clocks of intersecting roads, and of the towns through which their roads pass, all indicate the same time. The control of a telegraph wire for railroad business gives them the means of transmitting time-signals, and in New England it is the railroads which have virtually caused the all but universal acceptance of the Boston and New York standards referred to. Outside of New England there has been scarcely any concert of action among the railroads, and there are about seventy different standards of time in use. The result of the experiment in New England fairly justifies the belief that, were the railroads in the rest of the United States approached on this question, they would combine to adopt the standards of time now used by a few of the great centers of population. Thus, while it was found quite impossible to unite the New England roads upon Boston time, and while it would have been equally impossible to cause the Boston roads to run on New York time, it has proved