326 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 12. 



jection from any quarter. There are very 

 few students of science who are not familiar 

 with one or other of these idioms. And 

 the choice will be made generally accept- 

 able by the fact that they very fairly repre- 

 sent the two great Indo-European branches 

 of language, the Teutonic and the Eomanic, 

 in which at least nineteen-twentieths of all 

 scientific publications are likely to appear 

 for many years to come. If the time should 

 arrive when the addition of another lan- 

 guage may seem advisable, it can readily 

 be made by the proposed congress or any 

 other authority then governing the Central 

 Bureau. 



It would, of course, be understood that 

 the deliberations of the congress and of its 

 sections, and the papers read before them, 

 would not necessarily be restricted to the 

 two idioms of the catalogue, but might be in 

 any language which the congress or any 

 section should at the time decide to admit. 

 This decision, it may be assumed, will 

 always be considerate and liberal to the 

 largest possible degree. 



I am your obedient servant, 



HoEATio Hale. 

 The Secretaries of the Eoyal Society, 



Burlington House, London. 



SCIENTIFIC LITER A TUBE. 

 A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics : By Daniel 



G. Beinton. Ginn& Co., Boston. 1895. 



8°, pp. 152. 



The public mind is becoming more and 

 more interested in the archseology of Mexico 

 and Central America. At once symptomatic 

 of and a cause of increasing this interest 

 are the numerous explorations of recent 

 years, the exhibition from this region collect- 

 ed for the Exposition, and the notable works 

 published in Mexico, Spain and Germany in 

 connection with the Quadri-centennial cele- 

 bration of America's discovery. 



Nevertheless, students in our own country 

 are soBaeM'hat at a disadvantage in this 



matter. The literature of the subject is not 

 only scattered, but is in various languages, 

 — Spanish, French and German — and it is 

 not easy to keep track of progress. This 

 little volume, by one who has devoted years 

 to the study of 'the American Race,' and who 

 is a specialist in the languages, literature 

 and life of Isthmian people, will therefore be 

 particularly welcome. It not only summa- 

 rizes the work done, but is a guide to the or- 

 iginal publications wherein discussions have 

 been published. 



The Maj^an hieroglyi^hic system was in 

 wide-spread use, being represented on monu- 

 ments of Yucatan, Tabasco, Chiapas, Gua- 

 temala and Western Honduras. Though so 

 often compared with that of the Aztecs, it is 

 certainly more fully developed. On the 

 whole, it can not be said to comprise a very 

 great number of simple elements ; these, 

 however, are variously combined and united, 

 and the composite glyphs are manJ^ The 

 material for study varies. There are books 

 — Codices — written on long strips of paper, 

 which were folded screen-mse. Four such 

 codices are known, called the Codex Troano, 

 C. Cortesianus, C. Peresianus and C. Dres- 

 denis ; they are in libraries at Madrid, 

 Paris and Dresden. There are also mural 

 inscriptions cut in stone ; elaborate series 

 of calculiform characters chiseled on altars 

 and monoliths ; pretty cartouches engraved 

 on amulets or ornaments ; symbols or char- 

 acters painted on pottery ; glj'phs on hard, 

 firm grained boards of wood like those 

 from Tikal. 



Are these characters ideograms or pho- 

 netic ? There are those who believe they are 

 entirely the former ; there are othei-s who 

 claim that many are phonetic. Some ad- 

 mit that both occur. Brinton himself in- 

 vented, years since, the word ikonomatic. 

 He believes that there are some true ideo- 

 grams in the Mayan texts ; very many of 

 the characters, however, he believes are in 

 the nature of rebuses. They still betray 



