difficulty in expressing very considerable luim- 
bers^ and whose annals were written in bierogly- 
pineal characters. 
We have just seen, that the Mexicans, the 
Japanese, the people of Thibet, and several 
other nations of central Asia, have followed the 
same system in the division of the great cycles, 
and in the denomination of the years that com- 
pose them. We have now to examine a fact, 
which more immediately concerns the history of 
the migrations of the natives, and which seems 
hitherto to have escaped the researches of the 
learned. I think it may be proved that a great 
part of the names, by which the Mexicans de- 
noted the twenty days of their month, are those 
of the signs of a zodiac in use from the remotest 
antiquity among the nations of Eastern Asia. 
In order to demonstrate, that this assertion is 
less unfounded than it appears at first sight, I 
shall unite in the same table, 1st, The names of 
the Mexican hieroglyphics, such as they have 
been transmitted to us by every writer of the 
sixteenth century ; 2dly, The Tartarian, Japa- 
nese, and Thibetan names of the ‘ twelve signs 
of the zodiac ; and 3dly, The names of the 
naschatras, or lunar houses, of the calendar of 
the Hindoos. I flatter myself, that such of my 
readers as shall attentively examine this compa- 
rative table will feel interested in the discussion 
of the first divisions of the zodiac, on which we 
are going to enter. 
