1891.] Recent Literature. 271 
can and Maya records were susceptible of phonetic interpretation. 
Although, when undertaking to give a full description of Aubin’s 
Tonalamatl (the ritual calendar of the pre-Mexicans), it was not Dr. 
Seler’s object to uproot the aforesaid erroneous theory, yet he did so 
incidentally. It is a pleasure to see how, under his sagacious guidance, 
all those curious forms and objects which, influenced by Egyptology, 
certain students believed to represent letters, syllables, words, and 
sentences, more or less dissolve, and group together into such objects 
and paraphernalia as those dress-loving people, men and women, liked 
to don, to wear, to carry, when going to war or to the temple, or 
which were in use in their humble households as well as in the sump- 
tuously decorated chambers of their gods and goddesses. We hail the 
appearance of Dr. Seler’s Tonalamatl as a sign and promise of 
still more work in this direction. Landa’s Alphabet at last has 
become a dead letter. It has not shown from its first publication any 
trustworthy elements for interpretation, nor had it any claims to be 
advertised as a new Rosetta Stone 
No. 2, ‘* Alt-mexicanische Wurfbretter’’ treats of the Mexican 
‘*amiento,’’ a sliding apparatus, from which darts and javelins were 
hurled. This instrument was known to the Eskimos, the Polynesians, 
and various African tribes, but has been discarded by these peoples, 
as it had at the time of the Conquest by the Mexicans, according to 
Dr. Seler’s opinion, at least for the purposes of war. In this mono- 
graph the author again gives proof of his singular power of identifica- 
tion, finding the picture for the ‘‘amiento”’ in the illustrations 
embodied in the so-called Mexican Codices, which picture hitherto 
‘had been left unrecognized. From thirty diagrams, represented and 
discussed on the pages of the pamphlet, we learn its various shapes 
and contrivances, and what is still more interesting, how these various 
specimens were grasped for action, and held with hand and varying 
position of the fingers. The correctness of Dr. Seler’s recognition is 
warranted by comparison of the pictured specimens with six real ones 
recently found in Mexico, and of which three colored illustrations are 
given. It may here be in place to mention that Christopher Columbus 
seems to have been the first European to become acquainted with 
the ‘‘ amiento,’’ on his fourth voyage on the eastern shores of Chiriqui. 
He calls it ‘‘ ballista.”’ From the ‘‘ amiento,’’ undoubtedly, by the later 
addition of the bow, the cross-bow has been evolved. 
In No. 3 a chapter of a still unpublished -work from the pen of 
Father Sahagua (1570) has been extracted in its original Nahuatl lan- 
guage, with the corresponding Spanish text and illustrations, and an 
Am. Nat.—March.—6. 
” 
