480 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 116. 



Vol. v., Kingsborough.) The fact that it was 

 employed in pictography to express the sound 

 Huitzoco proves that the object depicted is a 

 'Huitzoctli,' described in Nahuatl dictionaries 

 as ' a staff of oak, used as a lever to upturn 

 sod or earth — a digging pole.' The figure 

 placed across the staff is the emblem of the 

 pulque (octli) gods and expresses here the 

 octli. It offers another interesting illustration 

 of the employment by Mexican scribes of com- 

 plementary signs, in order to render the mean- 

 ing of a hieroglyph unmistakable; a usage I had 

 detected and published about 1886 (see Stand- 

 ard on Headdress ? Peabody Museum, Papers, 

 Appendix). 



From the foregoing it is evident that, instead 

 of a possible drill, the hieroglyph represents 

 the digging staff, employed for its phonetic 

 sound with a complementary sign determining 

 it, thus : huitzoctli word expressing name Suit- 

 zoco (octli), complementary. 



Fig. 115 is the hieroglyph of the town, Tlach- 

 malacac (see, also, text of Codex Mendoza). 

 This word explains to us that the signs are rep- 

 resentations of 1, the tlachtli, not ' a possible 

 frame,' but the groundplan of the court em- 

 ployed for the national game of ball, or tlachtli. 

 This sign is well known, and frequent examples 

 of its employment to express the sound ilach 

 are to be seen in the same Codex Mendoza; see, 

 for instance, plate 33, fig. 2, and plate 38, fig 1, 

 where the name of the town of Tlaehco is ex- 

 pressed in picture writing. 



See also plate 22, fig. 4 (town Kacfeyahualco), 

 and plate 47, fig. 3, 27ac7iquianhco, expressed by 

 the sign tlachtli, within which are raindrops — 

 quiachuitl. The afiix co means inside of and is 

 expressed by the rain being represented inside 

 of the tlachtli. The object represented on the 

 tlachtli sign is a spinning-wheel, a malacatl; it 

 has nothing to do with the tlachtli and is only 

 employed to express its own sound. 



Figs. 100 and 116 are both representations of 

 priests kindling the New Fire at the beginning 

 of a new cycle, a ceremonial observance. 



Fig. 116 shows how the themaitl, or fire drill 

 of wood, was employed to kindle fire in a log 

 or large piece of prostrate wood ; a fact that 

 does not at all contradict Mr. McGuire's in- 

 teresting observation that, doubtless, the Mexi- 



cans employed the same kind of drill for boring 

 wood. Zelia Nuttall. 



THE PLAY OP ANIMALS ; THE FUR SEAL. 



It was with some little pleasure that I read 

 the review of Professor Gross' Die Spiele der 

 Thiere in Science for February 26th, and found 

 that he holds play in animals ' to be an instinct 

 developed by natural selection, * * and to be 

 on a level exactly with the other instincts which 

 are developed for their utility.' The pleasure 

 lay in the fact that having ventured into the (to 

 me) foreign domain of psychology, I had writ- 

 ten as follows: " The great redeeming feature 

 of the fur-seal's character is its playfulness 

 when young, for few animals seem to enjoy life 

 so well as the rollicking pups and young bach- 

 elors. But here again it is necessary to curb 

 our imagination and to remember that while the 

 young seals undoubtedly do derive a certain 

 amount of enjoyment from their sports very 

 much of what strikes us as mere play is in re- 

 ality dawning instinct. The sporting of seal 

 pups foreshadows the time when their very 

 lives will depend on the ability to capture food 

 for themselves, and the playful wrestling con- 

 tests in which they perpetually engage are mere 

 hints of future fierce battles among bulls. Year- 

 lings do not ' round up ' harems of pups with the 

 reasoning care that a child bestows on her dolls, 

 but because centuries of heredity have caused 

 this instinct to be developed long before it 

 serves any practical purpose." As the young 

 seals do not associate with the old, their play 

 would seem to be purely instinctive. The conclu- 

 sion derived from this study of the mental traits 

 of the fur seal and its direct bearing on the ques- 

 tions at issue is that "this acting by instinct is 

 the keynote of the seal's character ; the mind, 

 like the body, has been molded by natural 

 selection acting on the mass, so that one seal 

 behaves like another and knows just as much 

 as another, and no more. It is a creature of 

 instincts and not guided to any great extent by 

 reason; as it has done in the past so it will do in 

 the future ; its habits being formed by the slow 

 process of natural selection can change but 

 slowly; hence the fur seal is not likely to alter 

 its habits nor to adapt itself to changes in sur- 

 rounding conditions." F. A. Lucas. 



