30 



SGIENGE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 53. 



the result is a work not only of interest to the 

 lay reader, but of considerable scientific merit 

 and usefulness. The difficulty of selection from 

 the mass of material, much of it of doubtful in- 

 terpretation, to say the least, which the author 

 had at his disposal must not be underestimated 

 and to say, as we may, that he has accomplished 

 his task with judgment is no mean praise. 



The first four chapters of the book are taken 

 up with a discussion of pictography, both de- 

 scriptive and interpretative, and here, as was to 

 be expected from the previous work of the 

 author in the picture-writing of the North Am- 

 erican Indians, he shows himself thoroughly 

 at home. One of the main faults of the book 

 may be mentioned here, and that is the almost 

 overwhelming prominence given to American 

 remains and records in nearly every question 

 under discussion, a fault easy to understand 

 when the volume of research and even relative 

 importance of the pictographic remains of the 

 aborigines of this and other countries is consid- 

 ered, and yet the idea of proportion which the 

 general reader would obtain from the book must 

 inevitably be a wrong one. 



Of pictographs on stone those of the ' Algon- 

 kian type ' are the most numerous and widely 

 distributed, corresponding to the great area oc- 

 cupied by tribes of the linguistic family of that 

 name. They appear to be mainly representa- 

 tions of animals or concrete objects and prob- 

 ably served as hunting or other records. The 

 author points out that in nearly every instance 

 these Algonkian petroglyphs have been placed 

 upon rocks low down along the shore of water 

 courses, whereas many of the pictographs of 

 other types are placed upon high and conspicuous 

 cliflfs, in which case the drawings are apt to be 

 colored. 



In Mexico and Central America, petroglyphs 

 are comparatively rare, while in South America 

 investigation is at present not far enough ad- 

 vanced to present examples of much impor- 

 tance. 



In the chapter on pictographs on materials 

 other than stone, the art is traced through carv- 

 ings and drawings on ivory, bone and shell, in 

 which the Alaska Innuits especially excel, 

 through birch bark records to the use of mag- 

 uey paper by the Mexicans and papyrus by the 



Egyptians. The Mexican pictographs show a 

 very high degree of development in which the 

 artists had passed the stage of mere concrete 

 object drawing, and show signs of a beginning 

 system midway between the pictographic and 

 the phonetic. This system which has been 

 called the 'ikonomatic' is one in which "the 

 object employed to represent a complex word 

 or character, each furnishes its first syllable, or 

 more, to suggest the sound required for the com- 

 plex character and may have no other relation 

 to the general result." Colors were largely 

 used and may have had a phonetic value, though 

 often were nothing more than the natural color 

 of the object depicted. 



Dr. Hoffman denies that any evident parallel 

 exists between the pictographs of the "Western 

 hemisphere and those of the East. The Egyp- 

 tian had become entirely phonetic and partly 

 alphabetic, while the Chinese and other systems 

 were of a well developed syllabic order; the 

 American aborigines, on the other hand, had not 

 yet risen above the stage when a study of the 

 origin of their pictographs is possible, and there- 

 in lie their peculiar interest and value. 



The chapters on symbolic signs and gesture 

 signs and attitudes are especially good and well 

 arranged, while those on the growth of conven- 

 tional signs and comparisons give interesting 

 examples of primitive designations from which 

 space prevents our quoting. 



The book closes with a discussion of the 

 growth of the alphabet through the various 

 stages of graphic development; the transition 

 stages where the alphabetic character has served 

 as a pictorial representation of an object and as 

 a syllable being proved, as indicated above, by 

 reference to the systems in use among the early 

 Mexicans and the Mayas of Yucatan. 



Ikonomatic or rebus writing was extensively 

 used by the Mexicans, while the Mayas went a 

 step further and employed purely phonetic 

 signs as well as ideographic characters. 



In conclusion it may be said that Dr. Hoff- 

 man has raised very markedly the standard of 

 the hitherto somewhat disappointing series in 

 which his book appears, a standard which it is 

 to be hoped the succeeding issues will sustain. 

 Livingston Faeeand. 



Columbia College. 



