* 
mC CC 
ee 
cated 
265 
kind of writing. Dr. Hincks maintains that every vowel 
is expressed at least once; but that both vowels and conso- 
nants might be expressed twice, at the end of one character 
and at the beginning of the next. 
In addition to the correction made in Westergaard’s al- 
phabet by the addition of vowels to the consonants, which he 
supposed the complete representations of certain characters, 
and by the substitution of different vowels for those which he 
used, entirely new values are given by Dr. Hincks to five cha- 
racters which Westergaard had improperly valued, and to five 
more which he had not valued at all. 
Specimens of the inscriptions in this kind of writing, as 
read and translated, were added. The language was said to 
agree with the Indo-Germanic languages in having inflections ; 
but to have inflections completely different from those of all 
these languages. 
In a postscript to the paper it was stated, that the Babylo- 
nian and Assyrian alphabets were both of the same nature as 
this ; so far as that some of the characters represented syl- 
lables and some elementary sounds; that the same sound was 
represented by two or more characters; that no vowel was 
omitted ; and that vowels and consonants were habitually re- 
presented twice, when only to be sounded once. The number 
of elementary sounds in the Babylonian, or third kind of Per- 
sepolitan writing, was greater than in the second kind, as was 
the number of characters in use. Both the Babylonian and 
Assyrian had something in common with the second Persepo- 
litan language ; but they had also affinities with the Semitic 
languages. 
Rev. T. R. Robinson made some observations on Dr. 
Hincks’s paper, referring to researches on the same subject 
by Mr. Norris and Colonel Rawlinson. 
Rev. S. Butcher read the third part of Dr. Hincks’s paper 
on Egyptian hieroglyphies. 
