538 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 28 



"Altertiimer aus Guatemala ", by Eduard Seler. The names of these 

 two German investigators, Sapper and Seler, who are both entitled 

 to a hearing by virtue of long or frequent sojourns in the country of 

 which they write, and who have given us most valuable results from 

 their serious researches, are guarantees that the two papers contain 

 welcome information. We maj^ undoubtedly expect further com- 

 munications in this particular field from Mr Seler in the near 

 future, for on February 0, 1896, he writes from Tonala, in Mexico, 

 to the Geographical Society in Berlin that he is on the point of going 

 to Guatemala. 



Furthermore, the long-delayed appearance of the fifth part, text 

 as well as illustrations, of the "Archaeology " of A. P. Maudslay. 

 which, oddly enough, forms a part of the Biologia Centrali-Ameri- 

 cana, or Contributions to the Knowledge of the Fauna and Flora of 

 Mexico and Central America, is very gratifying. Maudslay confines 

 himself in the text, as he has done before, chiefly to the story of his 

 investigations and the desci'iption of the structures which have 

 been found. Mythology and the study of inscriptions are not so 

 much in his province, and yet both departments can derive great 

 benefit from the admirable illustrations. While the earlier parts 

 were chiefly concerned with Copan and Quirigua, that is, with the 

 region inland from the Gulf of Honduras, this fifth part carries us 

 some 6° farther north and treats of the extensive ruins of Chichen- 

 Itza, which have not been described for nearly two decades, and only 

 very meagerly before that time. From my point of view it is espe- 

 cially important and gratifying that these ruins also show a consid- 

 erable number of inscriptions which, as a rule, rarely occur north of 

 18° north latitude, whereas Chichen-Itza lies 2^° farther north. I 

 will here mention what seems to me a very interesting as well as 

 important point. 



While the Aztecs indicate the number 5 only by five small discon- 

 nected circles, the Maya represent it by a straight line ; thus the latter 

 obtain two number signs, the point or circle and the line. In this way 

 only is it jiossible for tliem to represent large numbers with so much 

 ease, which the Aztecs could never succeed in doing with their circles 

 and their, signs for 20, 400, and 8,000. I had hitherto been familiar 

 with this line for 5 only in the Maya manuscripts, in all of which it is 

 very common, also in the inscriptions of the ruins and vessels of 

 Palenque, Coban, Quirigua, and Copan, and finally in the wooden 

 tablets of Tikal, but not in anything coming from Uxmal or Labna in 

 the north of Yucatan. Hence, all the more eagerly I hailed the pres- 

 ence of this sign in Chichen-Itza, where it occurs very often. 



The familiar Ben-Ik sign occurring often in manuscripts and 

 inscriiotions, for which I proposed an interpretation in the Globus, 



