hers half reptile and half bird.

The use of explosives was adopted at an early period, and carried to
great perfection in later times. Some appear to have been made to
explode on concussion, others after a certain interval of time, but in
either case the destruction to life seems to have resulted from the
release of some poisonous vapour, not from the impact of bullets. So
powerful indeed must have become these explosives in later Atlantean
times, that we hear of whole companies of men being destroyed in
battle by the noxious gas generated by the explosion of one of these
bombs above their heads, thrown there by some sort of lever.

The monetary system must now be considered. During the first three
sub-races at all events, such a thing as a State coinage was unknown.
Small pieces of metal or leather stamped with some given value were,
it is true, used as tokens. Having a perforation in the centre they
were strung together, and were usually carried at the girdle. But each
man was as it were his own coiner, and the leather or metal token
fabricated by him, and exchanged with another for value received, was
but a personal acknowledgment of indebtedness, such as a promissory
note is among us. No man was entitled to fabricate more of these
tokens than he was able to redeem by the transfer of goods in his
possession. The tokens did not circulate as coinage does, while the
holder of the token had the means to estimate with perfect accuracy
the resources of his debtor by the clairvoyant faculty which all then
possessed to a greater or less degree, and which in any case of doubt
was instantly directed to ascertain the actual state of the facts.

It must be stated, however, that in the later days of Poseidonis, a
system approximating to our own currency was adopted, and the triple
mountain visible from the great southern capital was the favourite
representation on the State coinage.

But the system of land tenure is the most important subject under this
heading. Among the Rmoahal and Tlavatli, who lived chiefly by hunting
and fishing, the question naturally did not arise, though some system
of village cultivation was recognized in the Tlavatli days.

It was with the increase of population and civilization in the early
Toltec times that land first became worth fighting for. It is not
proposed to trace the system or want of system prevalent in the
troublous times anterior to the advent of the Golden Age. But the
records of th