e cruel Spaniards arrived and upset
their governments, destroyed their temples, massacred, enslaved and then
shamefully neglected them, they had already reached the art of
rebus-writing. The name of the Mexican King, Knife-Snake, or, Itz-Coatl
was written in this way: Itzli means knives, and Coatl, snake. There, in
Fig. 1, is the snake, and on his back are knives made of flint. They
even went farther. The same name, Itz-Coatl, was also written as in Fig.
2. The flint-headed arrow means _Itz_; the jar, called _Comitl_, stands
for _Co_; and the branch, a picture of water in drops, stands for _atl_,
water. And it has been asserted that certain neighbors of the Aztecs or
Mexicans, known as the Maya Indians of Yucatan, who were ancient people
of Central America, left ruins of cities covering square miles of forest
and plain, and had reached nearly if not quite to the invention of an
alphabet of vowels and consonants. But the latest authorities agree that
such a Maya alphabet as the Spaniards reported may have been invented
after the whites arrived. Specimens of Maya writing may be seen in
Washington, at the Smithsonian Institute, on slabs and on paper casts
taken from their idols or statues of kings and priests. It was not by
the Maya system, but by one of rebuses, that the old missionaries wrote
what few books they composed for their unhappy Indian congregations.
Only lately a book composed in picture-writing throughout, was printed
for the Mikmak Indians of Newfoundland.

In the next paper we will endeavor to trace the road by which our
English alphabet came down from the Phoenicians, that ancient folk of
the palm-tree and the Red Sea, whose alphabet you saw in the first paper
of this series.

The illustrations of this article are reproduced, by
permission, from a notable French work on ancient
Hieroglyphics by Prof. L. De Rosny, of Paris.

BUBBLE BOWLING

BY ADELIA B. BEARD.

"Nothing new in bubbles! Every one knows how to blow bubbles!" Of course
they do, and yet, the game I am about to describe is an entirely new and
a very interesting one.

When the game of Bubble Bowling was played for the first time, it
furnished an evening's entertainment, not only for the children, but for
grown people also; even a well known General and his staff, who graced
the occasion with their presence, joined in the sport, and seemed to
enjoy it equally with their youthful competitors. Loud was the chorus of
"B