182 iiEPORT— 1873. 



present wars, migratious, famines, and scenes of domestic life. They were, more- 

 over, able to record dates by means of an ingeniously devised cycle, and had 

 some idea of attaching a phonetic value to their symbols. 



In Peru, though some sort of hieroglyphic writing appears to have been known, 

 the chief substitute for writing was the Quipu or knotted cord. This consisted of a 

 main cord with strings of difrereut colours and lengths attached. The colour, 

 the mode of making the loops, knots, or tufts, their distance from the main cord 

 or fi-om each other, had all of them their meaning. Each Quipu had its own 

 keeper or interpreter, and by their means all public accounts were kept. Tlie 

 Wampum in North Ameiica was of somewhat similar character, and in Polynesia 

 also the same sort of Quipu is in use. 



There is a tradition among the Chinese of a similar system of recording events 

 by means of a knotted cord having been in use among them previous to the inven- 

 tion of writing. The Chinese system of writing, though far superior to that of 

 the Mexicans, is still not alphabetical, but syllabic. At the outset the characters 

 seem to have been pictorial ; but the representations of the objects have now be- 

 come so much conventionalized and changed, partly in consequence of the method 

 of writing by means of a brush, that there is much dilhculty in recognizing them. 



With a monosyllabic language, the words of which are of necessity limited in 

 number, one sound has often to represent more than one sense, and the Chinese 

 characters have therefore been divided into phonetics or radicals — those which 

 give the soimd, and the classificatory or determinatives, or those which give the 

 sense. 



The Eg;s'ptian hieroglj-phics present much analogy in character with the Chinese 

 method of writing. In their earliest form the}^ seem to have been principally pic- 

 torial, though also at the same time symbolic. The next stage would appear to 

 have been syllabic, when a certain sign represented a syllable, though often Avith 

 a second more truly literal sign affixed, denoting the final consonant of the syllable. 

 To prevent mistakes, the signs representing words were often accompanied by other 

 signs, which were merely determinative of the meaning. Thus three horizontal 

 zigzag lines representing water, showed that the previous symbol designated some- 

 thing connected with liquids — or two legs walking, that the word bore reference 

 to locomotion. Many liierogh^iliics, however', appear to be purely literal, though, 

 in the case of consonants, often having some vowel sound implied. These literal 

 hieroglyphics stand for the initial letters of the objects or ideas they represent : 

 for instance, a goose flying is the equivalent of P, the initial of Pai, to fly; an 

 owl stands for M, the first letter of Mitlar/, the Egyptian name of the bird. 



The more careful pictorial representations of the objects such as are to be seen 

 in sculptured hieroglyphics and in formal inscriptions required, however, too much 

 time for their execution to be adopted as an ordinary means of writing. In conse- 

 quence the signs became conventionalized, and the salient characteristics of the 

 object were seized on for the more cursive form of writing known as the hieratic. 

 From this, again, was deiived the writing known as demotic, in which many of the 

 symbols have become so much changed and simplified that it is with difficulty 

 that they can be identified as descendants of originally pictorial forms. 



A modified form of liieroglypliic writing is still in use among us, more espe- 

 cially in connexion with the science of astronomy ; and the conventional foi'ins 

 wliich now represent the signs of the Zodiac are very instructive as to the amount 

 of modification such symbols are liable to imdergo. 



In Aries (t) and Taurus (») the heads of the ram and the bull may still bo 

 recognized. Gemini is represented by tlie twin straight lines, n ; Cancer by its 

 claws, 25; and Leo by its head and tail, ft. In the symbol forYirgo there appears 

 to have been some confusion between Astrtea and the Virgin Mary, the sign being 

 symbolized by the letters mb, ny^. The scales of Libra, the sting of Scorpio, and 

 the arrow of Sagittarius can still be traced in tlie symbols, =2=, m, f. The twisted 

 tail of Capricornus survives in w, and Aquarius is represented by two wavy lines 

 of water, '.-.u. The remaining sign of Pisces has been much metamorphosed ; but the 

 two fishes, bad: to bade, with head and tail alternating, can readily be recon- 

 structed from the symbol K. 



The gradual simplification of form exhibited in these signs, and in the Chinese 



