760 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 624. 



writing naturally depicted in many cases the 

 same objects. Colonel Garrick Mallery, in 

 his great volume on 'Picture Writing of the 

 American Indian,' a publication of the Bureau 

 of Ethnology, says : " The present collection 

 shows the interesting psychologic fact that 

 primitive, or, at least, very ancient man made 

 the same figures in widely-separated regions, 

 though it is not established that the same 

 figures had a common significance." The 

 rude pictographs of bow, sun, moon, eye and 

 other objects may be found cut in rock 

 throughout the world, but these coincidences 

 do not indicate community of origin any more 

 than do the rude stone arrow head and spear 

 point which are world-wide in their distribu- 

 tion, and which Huxley said may be regarded 

 as 'weapons of necessity.' Interesting coin- 

 cidences do occur, as, for example, the Maya 

 glyph for division is represented by an oblong 

 oval figure with an inner oval outline having 

 two vertical lines. This has been supposed 

 to represent an obsidian knife. The Chinese 

 ideogram for division represents a knife of 

 another kind with two lines above representing 

 a thing divided. The Egji^tian glyph repre- 

 sents a knife like a chopper with a handle used 

 in cutting leather, this also means division. 



Mr. Chalf ant gives a reproduction of rude 

 characters found on fragments of tortoise 

 shell and on bone arrow heads which were 

 exhumed in the province of Honan in 1899. 

 Many of these characters are rude pictures of 

 objects, such as horse, stag, bird, scorpion, 

 halberd, bow and arrow, wine- jar, hill, field 

 and others. They are considered examples of 

 the earliest writing of the Chinese. The pro- 

 found difference between the Maya and asso- 

 ciated glyphs of middle America, and the 

 Chinese ideographs may be seen at a glance. 

 Ranging over a period of 3,000 years, at least, 

 the Chinese character has been in the form 

 of lines either enclosing spaces as in sun, 

 moon, field, etc., or lines running out from 

 the figure like twigs from a tree. In the Maya 

 and other glyphs of like character the lines of 

 the drawing invariably enclose spaces. In 

 other words the glyphs are made up of con- 

 ventional drawings of skulls, feet, vessels, etc., 

 in the solid. Here, indeed, one finds a funda- 



mental difference in the two methods; the 

 Maya glyph more nearly approaches the Egyp- 

 tian hieroglyph in which the picture of the 

 object is portrayed, though differing from the 

 rude, conventionalized Maya in being drawn 

 with remarkable fidelity and taste. The Maya 

 glyphs have been derived from larger draw- 

 ings, but in their condensed and abbreviated 

 forms remind one of those shrunken and 

 diminutive black human heads from South 

 America, which though greatly reduced in 

 size, still preserve the characteristics of the 

 full-sized head. The Maya glyphs were evolved 

 from more complex pictures, yet let one try 

 to imagine a slow evolution of these glyphs at 

 all paralleling the progressive development of 

 Chinese characters and he is forced to admit 

 their entire difference. As an example, take 

 the modern Chinese character for turtle, and 

 one can detect the back, the fore and hind 

 legs, tail, etc.; the Maya glyph for turtle, on 

 the contrary, represents the head alone with 

 a few rudimentary designs below or at the 

 sides, but unmistakable in its character with 

 its recurved beak and peculiar turtle snout. 



This brief review does scant justice to Mr. 

 Chalfant's memoir, but we trust that his con- 

 tributions may inspire others to enter this 

 interesting field of research. 



Edward S. Morse. 



Forest Mensuration. By Henry Solon 



Graves. New York, John Wiley and Sons. 



1906. Pp. 458. 8vo. 



That forestry is a business — the business of 

 making a revenue from wood crops — is now 

 perhaps grasped by even the most recent 

 novice in the ranks of propagandists for for- 

 est preservation. Every business requires the 

 measuring of financial effects; inquiries as to 

 the profitableness of its operations — ^the statics 

 of expenditure and return — occupy the man- 

 ager of every business. So in forestry, the 

 recurring inquiry is: Will it pay? Will the 

 effort and expense of making a plantation or 

 of leaving parts of a forest uncut to secure a 

 natural regeneration find eventually its proper 

 reward? 



How coiiiEplicated and difficult the answer 

 to this question must be can be realized when 



