March 17, 1893.] 



SCIENCE. 



147 



dot or semicircle filled with water and placed on the head. The 

 heavens with three disks of the sun is understood to mean three 

 days' journey ; and landing after a voyage is represented hy a tor- 

 toise. But there is no evidence to show that the Indians of the 

 north ever advanced beyond the lude attempts which we have 

 thus described," 



Lord Kingsborough's publication of "The Mexican Hiero- 

 glyphics" shows a higher developed intellect among that people 

 and cannot be placed in the same category with those of the 

 aboriginal Indians of the United States. They are colored, 

 written on paper, and are in many respects equal to the hiero- 

 glyphic inscriptions of Egypt. 



These most interesting books with their colored picture-writ- 

 ings, copies of which are in the possession of our California 

 Academy of Sciences, are worthy of the co.st expended on them 

 and the attention given them by scientific men. They give an 

 idea of the true condition of the inhabitants of Mexico before the 

 landing of Cortez. Max Miiller says : — 



" One of the most important helps towards the deciphering of 

 the hieroglyphics is to be found in certain American books, 

 which, soon after the conquest of Mexico, were written down by 

 natives who had learned the art of alphabetic writing from their 

 conquerors, the Spaniards. Ixtilxochitl, descended from the royal 

 family of Tezeuca, and. employed as interpreter by the Spanish 

 Government, wrote the history of his own country from the 

 earliest time to the arrival of Cortez. In writing this history he 

 followed the hieroglyphic paintings as they had been explained 

 to him by the old chroniclers. Some of these very paintings 

 which formed the text-book of the Mexican historian, have 

 been recovered by M. Aubin, and as they helped the historian 

 in writing his history, that history now helps the scholar in de- 

 ciphering their meaning. 



It is with the study of works like that of Ixtilxochitl that 

 American philology ought to begin. They are to the student of 

 American antiquioies whatManetto is to the student of Egyptian 

 hieroglyphics or Berosus to the decipherer of the cuneiform in- 

 scriptions. 



A small part of the hieroglyphics found at the source of the 

 American River, which I have thus described, have been photo 

 graphed by Mr. Jackson, principal of the Sacramento Art School. 



But, for the sake of science, it would be well, it seems to me, 

 to have the whole of the rock-inscriptions photographed and pre- 

 served for ethnological and scientific research. 



INVOLUNTARY RECOLLECTION. 



BY JAS. W. DONALDSON, ELLENVILLB, ULSTER COUNTY, N.Y. 



If one will but organize himself info a society for "psychical 

 research " and, cultivating a habit of introspection, observe care- 

 fully even his own mental processes, he will find much to interest 

 and confound him. 



And perhaps no other operations of his mind will furnish him 

 with more occasion for thought and investigation or prove more 

 interesting and suggestive than some Of the vagaries of involun- 

 tary recollection. 



There are few persons indeed of ordinary intelligence to whom 

 this at times strangely spontaneous habit of memory is not a 

 familiar, recognized experience, exciting more or less their wonder 

 and speculation. 



For example, we can all recall occasions when, though how- 

 ever earnestly engaged with other thoughts, n e have all at once 

 awakened to the discovery that we were at the same time uncon- 

 sciously humming a snatch from some old song, or mentally re- 

 peating a fragment of prose or verse learned in our childhood, 

 which we had supposed was long since buried so deep down 

 under the debris of years as to be beyond the hope of resurrec- 

 tion ; yet there it was, as fresh and vivid as ever, having, with a 

 dash of its old-time irrepressibility and abandon, burst in upon 

 our consciousness again without so much as asking "by your 

 leave." 



We may remember, too, that it has often happened that these 

 unexpected visitants were of a character to cause us much dis- 



comfort and humiliation, for we have found by sad experience 

 that n e may not easily " pluck from memory a rooted sorrow," 

 nor " raze out the hidden troubles of the brain;" and, worse than 

 all, that the "damned spot" will never "out," however frantic 

 and agonizing may be our entreaty. Indeed, it is impressed upon 

 us that, if there be any of our memories which are more perveree 

 and persistent than others, it is the erratic, or disreputable ones, 

 which we have thoughtlessly garnered and forced into unnatural 

 companionship with our graver and better impressions. These 

 will return again and again in spite of us, and it seems, as if with 

 malicious intent, that they often delight in choosing opportunities 

 when it is most to our embarrassment and mortification. 



Perhaps we are at a funeral, and have become touched and 

 subdued by the saddening ceremonies, or at church, earnestly 

 engaged with its impressive services, when, all at once, without 

 warning, one of these irreverent sprites of memory, with cap and 

 bells and many a comic antic, breaks in upon our serious mood, 

 and, wantonly disregarding the sanctities of the occasion, makes 

 mouths at its solemnities. Or it may be that sometime when in 

 the midst of a scene of innocent mirth and jollity the ghost of an 

 unavailing remorse, or the shadow of an event in our life full of 

 shame and agony, may suddenly appear to sadden and sober us 

 and dissipate our enjoyment. 



The writer recalls an incident in his own experience illustrating 

 the sometimes strange unexpectedness of this phase of recollec- 

 tion. 



Many years ago he was moved to memorize certain quaint and 

 amusing verges found in a newspaper. On a March day Jong 

 after, as he was riding out of Albany, and in a comfortable and 

 complacent mood listlessly gazing out of the car window upon 

 the bedraggled and cast-off garments of a rough and dissipated 

 winter, suddenly these verses, committed over thirty years before, 

 broke in upon his thoughts and began to reel themselves off with 

 the startling abruptness and unmanageable spontaneity of a way- 

 ward alarm-clock. 



Perhaps it was more than twenty years since they had last 

 occurred to him. He tried in vain to discover what in all tbat 

 dreary, forbidding landscape, or in the nature of his thoughts, 

 had set this jangling waif of memory agoing, but could not in 

 any way account for it; nothing in his mind seeming to bear the 

 remotest relation to it. Apparently, as if obedient to some unex- 

 plained law of periodicity, this disreputable tramp of the brain 

 had, in its vagabond wanderings, rounded its period, and, with 

 an impudent smirk and an affected wail of distress, there it was 

 again, liegging, "for Christ's sake," a dole of recognition at the 

 open door of an unwilling and repelling consciousness. 



Possibly, if we accept the later, and what seems the more rea- 

 sonable, conception of consciousness, that is, that it is not all of 

 memory, but merely one of its phases or conditions, and a de- 

 pendent, unstable one at that, we can the better account for some 

 of these freaks of spontaneous recollection. 



It is evident that a normal brain has more or less control over 

 that which shall cross the threshold of consciousness, for we know 

 many persons have the faculty of so absorbing themselves with 

 any certain line of thought as to be seemingly quite oblivious for 

 the time to everything else not pertinent to it. 



But, while it may appear that they are generally successful in 

 thus holding the door against a besieging host of interloping and 

 disturbing recollections, yet even they, too, sometimes fail to 

 make the exclusion completely effectual. 



Indeed, because of the very intensity of their thinking and 

 their unusual turmoil of brain, they are likely to arouse and 

 quicken other associations having certain constituent elements in 

 common with those entering into the texture of their main 

 thought, and these, too, may sneak into cognition along with the 

 invited guests in spite of their every precaution. 



Again, with the majority of persons, "mind wandering" is 

 more or less a besetting infirmity. The spring which holds the 

 door of their consciousness either has a congenital weakness or 

 has become more and more impotent because of disease or ap- 

 proaching senility, and is therefore capable of offering little re- 

 sistance to any strays of memory which may seek to enter. In 

 fact, so degenerate do some minds become, that consciousness, 



