OF THE ARROW-HEADED CHARACTER. 489 
ply reversing the position of the upright arrow- 
head, as in C D, into the position as given in 
A B, we have a new series at once, and strikingly 
different from the other. I shall not dwell further 
on this part of my subject, as I trust it is suffi- 
ciently evident that this simple elementary form, 
or single arrow-head, might, as doubtless it did, 
become the foundation of a most perfect and ex- 
tensive alphabet, admirably adapted for the use 
of a primitive people, who had day by day num- 
bers of ideas brought into action, inasmuch as 
being without the assistance of any accurate sci- 
entific knowledge, whereby they might be enabled 
to reduce to system and so classify their observa- 
tions on the ever-varying terrestrial and celestial 
phenomenon, (of which, however, as the very 
first and earliest recorders of such facts, they 
ought to stand most high in our veneration) it 
would be on this very account (namely, the mul- 
titude of apparently distinct ideas created by an 
unsystematized observation of the phenomena of 
nature), that they would require an almost infinite 
alphabet to enable them in that rude way to 
express by such conventional process, their num- 
berless observations. This, however, is some- 
what speculative, and not immediately bearing 
upon the subject. I may, however, ere I leave 
3Q 
