58 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



Fortieth Regular Meeting, May 17, 1881. 



Dr. W. J. Hoffman read a paper entitled The Application of 

 Gestures to the Interpretation of Pictographs. The fol- 

 lowing is an abstract of the paper : 



The speaker stated that, apart from the direct representation of 

 objects in the picture writings of the North American Indians, 

 those subjective ideas which were beyond the range of the artist's 

 skill formed the parts most difficult of interpretation. As attempts 

 at the reproduction of gesture lines are of frequent occurrence in 

 pictographs whose meaning is known to us, it was suggested that a 

 knowledge of the gesture language was essential in deciphering 

 others, the import of which was unknown. Numerous examples 

 were submitted illustrating the gesture origin of apparently unin- 

 telligible characters, but as the nature of the paper demanded 

 illustration on the black-board it is impossible to attempt an abstract 

 satisfactorily. 



Col. Mallery remarked that, as Dr. Hoffman and he had been 

 working together on the subject of the paper, with constant inter- 

 change of views, he naturally had no criticism to offer upon it. It 

 was, however, of interest to mention that the idea which had borne 

 fruit in the present paper was suggested by him in some sentences 

 of a paper read before this society on October 21, 1879 — to the 

 effect that Indians and other peoples among whom neither alphabetic 

 nor phonetic writing was known, and whose artistic skill was limi- 

 ted to the rude outline portraiture of a few objects, would, in seek- 

 ing to represent ideas graphically, resort to the lines of gesture 

 signs already used by them with distinct signification. This 

 deduction at the time was supported by little ascertained proof, but 

 the subsequent studies both of signs and of pictographs had estab- 

 lished it to be correct, of which the paper read was sufficient 

 evidence to the Society. The same illustrations drawn on the 

 black-board by Dr. Hoffman had also been drawn by him, together 

 with others, for the engraver, and will be produced under one of 



