10 
NATURE 
[| NoveMBER 5, 1896 
man, wherever he existed, used as writing materials 
such natural objects as were readily obtainable. Strips 
of bark, dressed skins, pieces of wood, bones, flat pieces 
of slate or stone, rocks, clay, &c.; when he was 
sufficiently advanced to beat out or to cast plates 
of metal, iron and bronze were also used by him 
for this purpose. At a later period he found out 
the way to make papyrus and paper, and this once done 
the task of the writer was comparatively simple. His 
pen varied with the substance which he wrote upon ; 
wood, stone and metal demanded a hard, sharp instru- 
ment, and skin and paper demanded only an object 
which would transmit the writing fluid to their surface 
in regular quantities at the will of the writer. Ink was 
in its earliest form simply a mixture of water with some 
burnt vegetable substance or mineral earth. The style 
and character of the writing were modified by the materials 
used ; and this is only a natural result when we consider 
how easy it is to draw circles, curved lines, and intricate 
devices upon a smooth substance like dressed skin or 
paper, and how hard it becomes to cut the same in 
stone. From the Chinese and cuneiform characters we 
may learn how, little by little, the original picture forms 
disappeared before the general use of stone and clay, and 
we know that the style of writing which was used for 
State documents was very different from that employed 
in the ordinary business of life. In the clay tablets of 
the last Assyrian Empire, about B.C. 700, the cuneiform 
characters bear no resemblance whatever to those which 
are found on the monuments of the period of Entenna, 
about B.C. 4500 ; in the Demotic writing of Egypt, so far 
back as the period of the Ptolemies, the pictorial 
character of the ancient hieroglyphics (from which it 
was derived, through the intermediate form of the hieratic 
or cursive form of writing employed by the priests) has 
quite disappeared. When we come to consider the 
characters used for writing purposes among the North 
American Indians, so ably discussed by Mr. Garrick 
Mallery (see “Sign Language among North American 
Indians,” in the Fzrvst Annual Report of the Bureau of 
Ethnology, p. 263 ff.), we find many pictures which show 
that they have much in common with picture signs in 
other languages. The sun is represented by a circle, as 
in Egyptian and Babylonian; sometimes it has rays 
shooting out all round it, just as we may see it in one 
of the vignettes of the ninety-second chapter of the “ Book 
of the Dead.” Sunrise is symbolised by a part of the 
‘disk showing above the ground ; in Egyptian the disk 
is seen rising between two mountains. The star is 
represented by a small circle with four rays shooting 
from it, each towards a cardinal point ; in Egyptian the 
star often has five points, but one of them probably 
represents the rope or chain by which the Egyptians 
thought it was hung out in the sky, and in Baby- 
lonian a star usually has eight points. The moon 
is represented by a crescent, as in Egyptian, Chinese, 
and Babylonian; heaven is a vaulted space, but in 
Egyptian it is drawn like the flat roof of a house, and 
has, moreover, supports by which it stands firm on the 
earth. To represent clouds a number of dark conical 
masses are drawn within the vault of heaven; the 
common Egyptian determinative for words meaning 
cloud is a tress of hair, and it is probable that this idea 
is common to both Egyptians and Indians. Similarly 
among both peoples rain was represented by lines of 
water falling from the sky. In fact it would seem that 
natural objects, both animate and inanimate, were written 
always in the same way, whether the writers were 
Chinese, or Egyptian, or Babylonian, or people of 
Western Asia, or the makers of the Cretan pictographs 
which Mr. A. J. Evans has discovered, or North 
American Indians. Abstract ideas were probably ex- 
pressed quite differently by all nations ; but even to touch 
on this far-reaching subject would be beyond the scope 
NO. 1410, VOL. 55] 
of this short notice. It must, however, be mentioned in 
passing that Mr. Garrick Mallery has collected a series 
of most important facts in connection with this subject in 
his “ Pictographs of the North-American Indians” (see 
Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology), a 
work which should be consulted by all who study the 
history of the development of writing in the world, and 
that he has further supplemented our knowledge of 
the subject by his later work, “ Picture-writing of the 
American Indians” (see Tenth Annual Report of the 
Bureau of Ethnology). \t is a curious fact that the 
peoples of North America did not invent an alphabet, 
as many of the other nations of the world have done, 
for it is clear to every one that a system of picture-writing, 
however simple, is really a cumbrous affair, and the mis- 
reading of a picture sign might be at times accompanied 
by dire consequences. At avery early period Chinese, 
Babylonians, and Egyptians introduced an alphabetic 
principle into their writing, and the Persians succeeded 
in abolishing entirely the picture element from their 
system. The other volumes of Reports are, each in its 
way, as interesting as those to which we have called 
attention, and from them we may learn that light and 
information can come from the West as well as from the 
East. The carefully made collections of ethnological facts, 
which we find in the series of works issued under the 
able direction of Mr. Powell, should do much to help and 
encourage other workers in their inquiries, and the 
scholarly way in which they have been set forth by his 
fellow-workers reflects the greatest credit upon the 
Smithsonian Institution, and upon all who have been 
connected with their publication. 
NOTES. 
It is stated that Lord Rayleigh has intimated to the Council 
of the Royal Society that he does not intend to seek re-election 
as one of the Secretaries of the Society. 
THE President of the Royal Society (Sir Joseph Lister) will 
preside at Prof. Dunstan’s lecture at the Imperial Institute next 
Monday evening. 
Lorp KELvin has been suffering for some time past from 
severe neuralgia in the head; but he is now much better, and 
was able on Saturday to attend at the Royal Society for an hour, 
THE celebration of the seventieth birthday of Prof. Stanislao 
Cannizzaro at Rome has been postponed to November 21, on 
account of the anniversary on July 12 falling in the University 
vacation. A Committee has been formed and has collected 
subscriptions, which are to be devoted partly to the production 
of a gold medal commemorative of the anniversary, the balance 
being handed to Prof. Cannizzaro to be applied at his discretion 
in the interests of science. Congratulatory addresses will be 
presented from various learned societies, and there will also 
be a ceremonial presentation of the medal and subscribed fund. 
THE recent Conference at Burlington House on the proposed 
International Catalogue of Scientific Publications appears to have 
stimulated interest in the subject-index to the Royal Society’s 
“Catalogue of Scientific Papers,” upon which the Society’s staff 
is already engaged. The College Section of the American 
Library Association at their meeting last month unanimously 
passed the following resolution:—‘‘That the Section has 
learned with great satisfaction that the Council of the Royal 
Society proposes to add to the debt which the scientific world 
already owes to it for its valuable ‘Catalogue of Scientific 
Papers,’ by making a subject-index to the papers contained 
therein.” 
