Brinton.l 508 [Oct. 1, 



loss of the allusion in the current Language, and recourse must 

 be had to ancient and obsolete words to appreciate it. The Eng- 

 lish Harrisons display in their shield a hedgehog, which is to be 

 explained by the French herisson, and testifies to their Norman 

 origin. The Sykes of the north of England show a fountain in 

 their shield, whose significance is first ascertained on learning 

 that in the Northumbrian dialect syke means a flowing spring 

 or stream. The celebrated Jieurs-de-lys of the royal house of 

 France are traced back to the first Louis, whose name was pro- 

 nounced Loys, and from the similarity of this to the common 

 name of the flower, the latter was adopted as the charge on his 

 shield. 



Hundreds of such examples could be adduced, and the task of 

 examining and analyzing them would not be an altogether vain 

 one, as the principles upon which they were applied are the same 

 which control the development of ikonomatic writing wherever 

 we find it. But I pass from the consideration of these facts of 

 general knowledge to the less known and much misunderstood 

 forms of this writing which are presented in American archae- 

 ology. 



These are best exemplified in the so-called Mexican picture 

 writing. For many years scholars have been divided in opinion 

 whether this was purely ikonographic or partly phonetic. About 

 forty years ago M. Aubin wrote an essay maintaining that it is 

 chiefly phonetic, and laid down rules for its interpretation on 

 this theor}'. But neither he nor any who undertook to apply 

 his teachings succeeded in offering any acceptable renderings of 

 the Aztec Codices. I am persuaded, however, that the cause of 

 this failure lay, not in the theory of Aubin, but in the two facts, 

 first, that not one of the students who approached this subject was 

 well grounded in the Nahuatl language ; and, secondly, that the 

 principles of the interpretation of ikonomatic writing have never 

 been carefully defined, and are extremely difficult, ambiguous 

 and obscure, enough so to discourage any one not specially 

 giited in the solution of enigmas. At first, every identification 

 is as puzzling as the effort to decipher an artificial rebus. 



There are, indeed, some able scholars who still deny that any 

 sueh phonetieism is to be found in Mexican pictography. To 

 convince such of their error, and to illustrate the methods em- 



