4 TlMEHRI. 
ciation is not accurately described to the outside world by 
its title ; and it is obvious that if this Journal, which is 
to deal with scientific and literary, at least as much as 
with agricultural and commercial, subjects, is to obtain 
that wide circulation outside the colony which we desire, 
it must not handicap itself by taking as its title, at 
least as its first title, one that wrongly describes its con- 
tents. Then came the difficulty that no short truly des- 
criptive title was obvious. This difficulty has been met, 
perhaps shirked somewhat ignobly, by taking a title 
which is convenient in its brevity and is at the same 
time not falsely descriptive, in that it is not descriptive 
at all. And yet this title which we have chosen is not 
without great appropriateness. 
Timehri or Timeneeri is a Carib word, belonging to a 
language which was spoken in Guiana before any Euro- 
pean tongue ever wagged here, signifying certain marks 
or figures which, like our letters and words, expressed 
ideas, which, to use a long word, were ideographic. On 
many of the rocks of Guiana these marks or Timehri, 
which were here so long before any European pen ever 
made mark on paper in Guiana that their engravers 
have been forgotten, still exist. As in Egypt the hiero- 
glyphics, so in Guiana these Timehri stand as the re- 
cords of a forgotten time, and the oldest to be found 
within our limits. 
Perhaps we may be allowed to digress for a few 
minutes to show that the word Timehri has a curious 
scientific and etymological interest. Scientific men, when 
nothing more than scientific, are notoriously barbarous 
linguists. To mix a Greek with a Latin word into 
