MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 81 



the lithographic ink untouched. The ink is removed as before by 

 benzine. The surfaces wuieh are thus laid hare are oxidized ail 

 meri'urv Is again poured on the plate. This metal recoils from the 

 oxidized lines, and collects on the silver, making reliefs where lights 

 ought to be. An impression in plaster is obtained as before, and the 

 electro-chemical plate which is to be used for the printing has the 

 lines of the da-awing in relief as required. 



IDEOGRAPHY. 



Sir W. Armstrong, at the British Association for 1863, in his 

 inaugural address, expressed surprise and regret that, notwithstand- 

 ing the many improvements of modern times in the communication 

 of intelligence and thought, our present mode of writing is not more 

 free from imperfection than was that in use centuries ago. What he 

 desires is a set of symbols which will enable us to communicate with 

 each other more rapidly, and at the same time more distinctly, by 

 writing. Don De Alas, Spanish Ambassador at the Court of China, 

 has also recently entered upon an investigation of this general sub- 

 ject, and has published a work with the following title ; "Ideography: 

 a Dissertation on the Possibility and Facility of Forming a General 

 System of Writing, by means of which all Nations may understand 

 each other without knowing each others language." The aim of 

 the author is to introduce a medium of communication which may be 

 to all nations something like what the Latin language once was to the 

 learned in all parts of western Europe, and what written Chinese is 

 at the present day to the inhabitants of the various provinces of 

 China, Japan, Cochin China, and Tonquin, where languages are 

 spoken so different in sound that those who speak them cannot under- 

 siaa I each other in conversation, though they can carry on discussions 

 as our author has repeatedly witnessed with pencil and paper. 

 He considers it ridiculous to doubt the possibility of our doing in 

 Europe what five hundred millions of Asiatics so far inferior to us are 

 doing every day. Even granting this it does not prove the possibil- 

 ity, still less the facility, as he maintains, of inventing and bringing 

 into general use a completely new written language. He himself 



"iii 



abandons the idea of attempting to create a universal spoken lan- 

 guage, both on account of the difficulty of the task, and the impos- 

 sibility of securing the general adoption of the language, even if it 

 were made ready to hand. It appears to us that these two fatal 

 objections apply with scarcely less force to his present effort. He 

 has certainly proved the possibility of constructing a system of 

 written communication capable of use, to a certain extent, because 

 he has actually accomplished the feat, so far as to express the nrst 

 hundred and iifty lines of Virgil's yEneid in his proposed language. 

 But he is greatly mistaken if he thinks he has proved the facility of 

 the task. Even to understand what he has done is no easy matter, 

 and the labor of doing it must have been immense. None can com- 

 prehend, still less acquire, his system of writing, who are not well 

 versed in language, and acquainted with, at least, the elements of 

 logic. We leave our readers to judge whether this in itself is not 

 sufficient to prove the hopeless impracticability of the scheme. Com- 

 paratively few will ever be able, and still fewer willing, to make any 

 use of it. 



