76 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



and the fashion, once set to the imitative race which mainly does 

 our shaving, has lately advanced another step, so that their newest 

 poles show the blue in a union, with the proper arrangement of 

 stars, and the red and white stripes extending straight instead of 

 spirally, becoming nothing more nor less than a wooden United 

 States flag of clumsy shape. 



In the examination of pictographs and of sign languages as 

 nearly connected with them, it is important to form a still more 

 explicit distinction between signs proper and symbols. All. char- 

 acters in Indian picture writing have been loosely styled symbols, 

 and as there is no logical distinction between the characters 

 impressed with enduring form and when merely outlined in the 

 ambient air, all Indian gestures, motions, and attitudes might with 

 equal appropriateness be called symbolic. While, however, all 

 symbols come under the generic head of signs, very few signs are 

 in accurate classification symbols. Symbols are less obvious and 

 more artificial than mere signs, require convention, are not only 

 abstract, but metaphysical, and often need explanation from history, 

 religion, and customs. They do not depict but suggest subjects ; 

 do not speak directly through the eye to the intelligence, but pre- 

 suppose in the mind knowledge of an event or fact which the sign 

 recalls. The symbols of the ark, dove, olive branch, and rainbow 

 would be wholly meaningless to people unfamiliar with the Mosaic 

 or some similar cosmology, as would be the cross and the crescent 

 to those ignorant of history. The last named objects appeared in 

 the class of emblems when used in designating the conflicting 

 powers of Christendom and Islamism. Emblems do not necessarily 

 require any analogy between the objects representing, and the ob- 

 jects or qualities represented, but may arise from pure accident. 

 After a scurrilous jest the beggar's wallet became the emblem of 

 the confederated nobles, the Gueux, of the Netherlands ; and a sling, 

 in the early minority of Louis XIV., was adopted by the Frondeur 

 opponents of Mazarin, from the refrain of a song. The portraiture 

 of a fish, used, especially by the early Christians, for the name and 



