gems, jade, Fischer-Book, amazonite, Brazil, feldspar

After my earlier publications demonstrated how abundant Mexico is in skillfully carved figures made from hard stones, it has always been my goal to trace the occurrence of such remnants of a lost American culture further south and east, to the Antilles, Central, and South America. From Central America originate, among others, the figures already presented in my work on nephrite (1875): Fig. 34, 35, p. 31; Fig. 42, p. 34; Fig. 115, p. 281; Fig. 121, 122, 123, p. 344; Fig. 124, p. 345 (where ‘Mexico’ is erroneously mentioned). From South America, one finds in the same work Fig. 9, p. 26; Fig. 18, 19, p. 27; Fig. 50, p. 38; Fig. 60, p. 45. At that time, the origins of Fig. 38 (frog or toad?), p. 33, and Fig. 41, p. 34, remained uncertain. For Fig. 38 (from the Geneva Museum, which I reproduce here as Fig. 1), I later became acquainted with further interesting counterparts. However, most of these pieces in the respective museums were also not attributed to a precise origin. These include Fig. 46, Plate VII (from Guadeloupe), as well as Fig. 73 and Fig. 74 on Plate VIII, in the same publication in the Archiv, made of nephrite, serpentine, and clay slate, the latter two now belonging to the Freiburg Museum (in this treatise […]).