1880. ] Anthropology. 135 
was in fragments on the floor; the middle one had been carried 
off to the banks of the river *by a vandal who wished to adorn 
his house with it; and the one on the left was in its original 
position, which it now occupies. Stephens and Catherwood 
visited the spot in 1840, and were entertained by Mr. Charles Rus- 
sel, our counsel at Laguna. They made drawings of the ruins, 
and shortly after their visit the fragments of the right hand slab 
were sent to the National Institute in Washington, where it 
arrived in 1842. The site has since been visited by Arthur 
Morelet in 1846, and M. Désiré Charnay, for the French Govern- 
ment, in 1857. The tablet was transferred to the Smithsonian 
Institution 1858, and in 1863, while making a cast for Prof. Henry, 
r. George A. Matile discovered that this was the missing slab 
from the Palenque group, not drawn by explorers after Dupaix. 
It was broken again after Dr. Matile’s cast was made, but recon- 
structed and set in its present frame, from which Dr. Rau’s pho- 
tograph was taken. Whatever doubt may have remained after 
Matile’s argument, is tfow dispelled by reference to the outline 
plate of Dr. Rau’s work, in which the whole Group of the Cross 
is again restored, 
other things, an alphabet of thirty-three signs. It will be remem- 
bered that a similar old MSS. is mentioned by Sr. Orozcoy Berra, 
in Anales del Museo Nacional de Mexico, containing the Lord’s 
Prayer in symbols, partly Aztec and partly ecclesiastic. All 
attempts to interpret the Central American glyphs and mant 
au, th 
Oph on the tablet may be easily referred to (it is a pity that 
e 
ily On pages 62 and 63, some of the glyphs are analyzed, : 
The author concludes that the analogies between Landa’s signs 
and the glyphs warrant the suggestion that the inscriptions con- 
stitute a chronological record of some kind. On pages 53 and o 
64 Dr. ; 
ae Stephens, and others, as to the close relationship between the . 
