ANIMAL FIGURES IN THE MAYA CODICES 331 



no figure appears in the usual place below. The Tun period 

 glyph (PI. 17, fig. 10) frequently shows vulture character- 

 istics especially in the nostril of the face. The teeth, how- 

 ever, often appearing in the Tun glyph would be against 

 this theory. The blending of bird and mammal characteristics 

 is not uncommon in the Maya drawings, however. 



The Nahua day sign, Cozcaquauhtli, as previously noted, 

 has the meaning vulture, and we naturally find this bird 

 frequently represented in the Mexican codices. In the 

 Nuttall Codex, the head of the king vulture occurs repeatedly 

 as a glyph for this day. In its less modified forms (PL 18, 

 figs. 2-4), the beak is merely a pair of flattened rami, sur- 

 mounted proximally by the conspicuous quadrangular knob. 

 The minute hair-like feathers on the otherwise naked head 

 are shown as a fringe at the throat and crown, while a con- 

 ventionalized ear is represented posteriorly. A series of inter- 

 esting figures (PL 18, figs. 5-10) illustrates steps in the further 

 reduction of this head to a small glyph in which only the beak 

 with its large squarish knob remains (PL 18, fig. 10). 



Black Vulture {Catharista uruhu). It is difficult to 

 assign any single characteristic to the figures representing 

 the black vulture (Maya, Csom) other than the long raptorial 

 beak. A number of drawings probably depict black vultures, 

 though this cannot be certainly affirmed. Such are those 

 shown in PL 18, figs. 11, 12, 14, 17; PL 19, figs. 2-4, 13, 14. 

 Stempell considers the vulture shown in PL 18,' fig. 13, to be 

 a king vulture, but it has no knob on the beak, and thus is 

 -quite likely the black vulture. The fact that its head is 

 shaped much like that of the god with the king vulture head (PL 

 17, fig. 3) would indicate merely the individuality of the artist. 

 The coloring of the species under discussion is uniformly 

 black in the Dresden and Tro-Cortesianus, except in certain 

 cases where the birds are shown in outline only, as in PL 19* 

 fig. 12. It is not certain, however, that these two last are 

 black vultures, though they suggest the species. The two 

 birds shown in PL 19, figs, o, 6, are almost surely black vul- 

 tures, and, as represented in the manuscript, are descending 



