ved form of a
skull by Dr. HARRISON ALLEN,[225-*] and we now know that this common
form relates not to the human skull, as Dr. ALLEN has supposed, but to
that of the tiger. We shall find this figure often repeated, and the
identification is of importance. This is a case in regard to synonyms.
The kind of symbolism so ably treated by Dr. ALLEN is well exemplified
in the conventional sign for the _crotalus_ jaw at the mouth of the mask
over the head of each figure. This is again found on the body of the
snake in Plate LX, and in other places. Other important questions can
be settled by comparison of the two plates. For example, at Palenque we
often find a sign composed of a half ellipse, inside of which bars are
drawn. [Illustration] I shall elsewhere show that there is reason to
believe the ellipse is to represent the concave of the sky, its diameter
to be the level earth, and in some cases at least the bars to be the
descending and fertilizing rain. The bars are sometimes two, three, and
sometimes four in number. Are these variants of a single sign, or are
they synonyms? Before the discovery of the identity of the personages in
these two plates, this question could not be answered. Now we can say
that they are not synonyms, or at least that they must be considered
separately. To show this, examine the bands just above the wristlets of
the two figures. Over the left hands of the figures the bars are two in
number; over the right hands there are four. This exact similarity is
not accidental; there is a meaning in it, and we must search for its
explanation elsewhere, but we now have a valuable test of what needs to
be regarded, and of what, on the other hand, may be passed over as
accidental or unimportant.

One other case needs mentioning here, as it will be of future use. From
the waist of each figure depend nine oval solids, six being hatched over
like pine cones and the three central ones having two ovals, one within
the other, engraved on them. In Plate IV the inner ovals are all on the
right-hand side of the outer ovals. Would they mean the same if they
were on the left-hand side? Plate I enables us to say that they would,
since one of these inner ovals has been put by the artist on that side
by accident or by an allowed caprice. It is by furnishing us with tests
and criteria like these that the proof of the identity of these two
plates is immediately important. In other ways, too, the proof is
valuable and interesti