-66 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. II. 



do. While such phonetic inaccuracy is unfortunate, no one acquainted 

 with ancient modes of writing will find in it any cause for surprise or 

 doubt. The Siberian characters are conventional forms of ancient hiero- 

 glyphics, as were the old Semitic letters, and as the scribes of early days 

 employed many symbols to denote the same sound, such as a leg, a fish, 

 a mountain, for the sound me, so the writers of the conventional character 

 indicated this same phonetic value by several distinct engraved forms 

 One of the commonest Siberian emblems is the fish, denoting an in 

 syllable^ ^. 



Coming now to the representations of the inscriptions by means of 

 Siberian type, it unhappily appears that Mr. Aspelin or Professor Con- 

 ner, whoever may be responsible for the new font, has been premature in 

 his application of it. Several of the inscriptions deciphered by me are 

 contained in Inscriptions de I'lenissei, but the two rarely coincide. The 

 copies furnished to me are in large characters carefully copied from the 

 originals, while, save in the necessarily somewhat indistinct photographs 

 at the end of the Helsingfors volume, there is no attempt in it at an 

 exact reproduction of the features of the inscribed stones. The conse- 

 quences are that the font of Siberian type is defective, that aberrant 

 characters are represented by their nearest equivalents in form, that flaws 

 in the stones are mistaken for parts of symbols, that the common sign 

 for a vowel, a perpendicular line, has been taken for the colon like 

 divider of words and clauses, and many other regrettable obstacles in 

 the way of correct decipherment. These errors are not to be wondered at, 

 when the weathering of the stones, the occasional rudeness of their carv- 

 ing, the latitude allowed themselves by the engravers, and the absolute 

 ignorance of the phonetic values of the characters on the part of those who 

 have conventionally expressed them in imperfect type, are taken into 

 account. Nevertheless, it is to be confessed, with sorrow, that time spent 

 upon Messrs. Aspelin and Donner's printed copies will be largely wasted, 

 since few decipherers will be patient enough to seek for conjectural 

 emendations, or bold enough to make these in the face of clear cut 

 printed characters possessing phonetic values entirely different from the 

 originals. In the meantime, what is wanted is carefully executed litho- 

 graphs of the inscriptions, exhibiting cracks and flaws in the stones, 

 imperfect strokes, and aberrant characters. The motto, festina lente, 

 valuable in so many connections, is especially so in that of epigraphy, 

 wherein so much depends on the value of a single character. An in- 

 scription in legible characters which can only be read fragmentarily 

 is not read at all ; at any rate, its reading inspires the reverse of confi- 

 dence. It is as painful and disappointing for me to draw attention to 

 these defects in Inscriptions de I'lenissei, as it can be for the devoted 



