gines. The
patient researches of our archaeologists have recovered but very little
of their manners and habits, and one has constantly to avoid the
tempting suggestions of an imagination which has been formed by modern
influences, and to endeavor to keep free from every suggestion not
inherent in the stones themselves. I say the stones, for I have only
used the Maya manuscripts incidentally. They do not possess, to me, the
same interest, and I think it may certainly be said that all of them are
younger than the Palenque tablets, and far younger than the inscriptions
at Copan.

I therefore determined to apply the ordinary principles of deciphering,
without any bias, to the Yucatec inscriptions, and to go as far as I
could _certainly_. Arrived at the point where demonstration ceased, it
would be my duty to stop. For, while even the conjectures of a mind
perfectly trained in archaeologic research are valuable and may
subsequently prove to be quite right, my lack of familiarity with
historical works forced me to keep within narrow and safe limits.

My programme at beginning was, _first_, to see if the inscriptions at
Copan and Palenque were written in the same tongue. When I say "to see,"
I mean to definitely prove the fact, and so in other cases; _second_, to
see how the tablets were to be read. That is, in horizontal lines, are
they to be read from right to left, or the reverse? In vertical columns,
are they to be read up or down? _Third_, to see whether they were
phonetic characters, or merely ideographic, or a mixture of the
two--rebus-like, in fact.

If the characters turned out to be purely phonetic, I had determined to
stop at this point, since I had not the time to learn the Maya language,
and again because I utterly and totally distrusted the methods which, up
to this time, have been applied by BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG and others who
start, and must start, from the misleading and unlucky alphabet handed
down by LANDA. I believe that legacy to have been a positive misfortune,
and I believe any process of the kind attempted by BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG
(for example, in his essay on the _MS. Troano_) to be extremely
dangerous and difficult in application, and to require a degree of
scientific caution almost unique.

Dr. HARRISON ALLEN, in his paper, "The Life Form in Art," in the
_Transactions of the American Philosophical Society_, is the only
investigator who has applied this method to Central American remains
with su