In Brittany, where Celtic remains are found in such abundance, it is not uncommon to see stone hammers of the latter kind hanging up in the cottages of the peasants, who use them to drive in nails with.

They have an odd way of providing them with handles, by sticking them tight upon branches of young trees, and when the branch has grown larger, and has thus rivetted itself tightly on both sides of the stone head, they cut it off, and carry home the hammer ready for use.
Though the Mexicans carried the arts of knife and arrow-making and sculpturing hard stone to such perfection, I do not think they ever discovered the art of making a hole in a stone hammer.

The handles of the axes shown in the picture-writings are clumsy sticks swelling into a large knob at one end, and the axe-blade is fixed into a hole in this knob.

Some of the Mexican hammers seem to have had their handles fixed in this way; while others were made with a groove, in the same manner as the earlier kind of European stone hammers just described.
When we consider the beauty of the Mexican stonecutter's work, it seems wonderful that they should have been able to do it without iron tools.
It is quite clear that, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, they used bronze hatchets, containing that very small proportion of tin which gives the alloy nearly the hardness of steel.

We saw many of these hatchets in museums, and Mr.Christy bought some good specimens in a collection of antiquities which had belonged to an old Mexican, who got them principally from the suburb of Tlatelolco, in the neighbourhood of the ancient market-place of the city.