217 



I deprive you of a happy analogy, I will imme- 

 diately make you amends, by presenting you with 

 a similar analogy in the method followed by the 

 Hebrews in tracing their manuscripts. When 

 they cannot place the whole of a word in one 

 line, they trace the first characters of it at the end 

 of that line, and write it entire in the following ; 

 so that these first characters are written twice, 

 exactly as you have remarked in the Azteck ma- 

 nuscripts, or rather paintings. This method 

 has been followed in several editions of the Bible 

 printed in Hebrew, so true it is, that the mind of 

 man, notwithstanding the difference of ages and 

 climate, is disposed to act in the same manner in 

 similar circumstances, without needing the aid 

 either of tradition or of example. 



I refer to this same principle the invention of 

 the machine for the production of fire by the 

 friction of two pieces of wood*. It was not 

 Mercury, surely, who taught the use of the pyrem, 

 or the igniaria, to the Indians on the banks of 

 the Orinoco. No Greek monument exhibits this 

 custom of heroic times, while you twice give the 

 representation of it in the hieroglyphical paint- 

 ings of the Aztecks -j~. Nevertheless it was fa- 

 miliar to the ancient inhabitants of Greece ; and 

 the figures you have published prove the accuracy 



* Vol. xiii, p. 225, 226, 



f Plate 15, No. 8, and plate 47. 



